A Texas teacher is adjusting to life without limbs after a strep infection caused her to go into septic shock – prompting doctors to amputate her arms and legs to save her life.
Last April, high school teacher Sherri Moody of Deer Park, Texas, started feeling sick after a school field trip — something she initially dismissed as a common illness.
But when she started having trouble breathing, husband David took her to the hospital, the couple said Danas.com.
“I’ve never been to an emergency room before in my life,” Sherri, 51, told the paper. “I was very healthy, very fit. I ate properly, exercised.”
However, she developed pneumonia in both lungs, caused by Streptococcus bacteria.
Sherri Moody and husband David Moody speak to Click2Houston.
KPRC 2 Click2Houston/YouTube
Symptoms of Streptococcus pneumonia include fever and chills, cough, shortness of breath and chest pain, the CDC says, explaining that sepsis — defined as “an extreme body response to infection” — is a risk for the disease.
Doctors then told the Moodys that Sherri had sepsis.
“I had to google what sepsis was. I had no idea. We are quite healthy people,” 53-year-old David told the newspaper. “I quickly realized that we are in a difficult situation. I was scared to pieces.”
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Her prognosis was complicated by the immune-suppressing medication Sherri was taking for rheumatoid arthritis.
“It was like a Category 5 hurricane coming,” David said Today. “She had nothing to fight with. It’s as if she went to war without soldiers.”
Her kidneys and lungs began to shut down, and the mother of one son, Jake, was placed in a medically induced coma as doctors tried to save her life in the intensive care unit.
Part of her care included vasopressors, powerful drugs that the Cleveland Clinic explains make blood vessels constrict, forcing the heart to pump harder.
“Vasopressor drugs can save your life by helping your organs continue to function,” the Cleveland Clinic explains, adding that they are “a form of life support.”
“The use of vasopressors in the treatment of septic shock is vital,” explains the National Library of Medicine. But they come with risks to the extremities, as their use poses a serious risk of blocking blood flow.
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This can lead to “tissue necrosis and amputation. Acute limb ischemia is associated with high morbidity and mortality.”
And that’s what happened with Sherri, her husband said.
“I literally watched my wife’s feet and hands die,” he said. “They were black and they were mummified.”
When she woke up from the coma, Sherri was told that doctors would not be able to save her limbs.
“I’m very mentally strong,” Sherri said Today. “I simply choose to be happy… It doesn’t mean that I don’t have a breakdown here and there and just cry a little. I don’t let it last long.”
Friends have set up a GoFundMe to help the family defray the cost of medical bills and prosthetic limbs, which he hopes to one day receive.
“There’s a dark road that we could easily go down … I know Sherri’s smiling and she’s beautiful and she’s very authentic,” David told Click2Houston, adding, “The days are challenging.”
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“I’ve learned everything about hair and makeup, brushing my teeth and eating,” said Sherri, sharing that her daughter-in-law Mika helps her.
“We remind each other to choose joy in the day,” she said.
“When people fall, I know it’s easy to say, but it’s a choice,” she told the station, “but what works for me is to just choose and quickly say ‘Tell me a joke’ or ‘What’s the best’ memory we’ve had .’”
The family shares updates on her progress, as well as fundraising information, on their Facebook group.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education