I nearly died of sepsis af ter surgery, says Fern Britton
FERN Britton has revealed that she ‘was resigned to dying’ when she developed sepsis.
The TV host and author went in to hospital last year for a hysterectomy.
The procedure was successful, but three days later she was in such agonising pain she was unable to walk.
After being told to ‘wait and see’ by doctors, she was finally re-admitted to hospital where tests showed she was suffering from a bacterial infection and several abscesses.
The 59-year-old then contracted sepsis – a potentially deadly reaction when the body responds to an infection by attacking its own organs.
Difficult to diagnose, it can lead to multiple organ failure and death without quick treatment.
The Daily Mail has been campaigning to raise awareness of the symptoms among patients and medical staff.
Speaking about her ordeal for the first time, former This Morning host Miss Britton said she went into a private hospital on July 13 last year for a hysterectomy to deal with fibroids – benign tumours – on the uterus.
But after returning home, the pain soared.
Doctors ‘suggested paracetamol and a wait-and-see approach’ but by the next day her condition had deteriorated so much she could barely walk. Shivering and with severe muscle and joint aches, she summoned help but a GP on duty at her local surgery was too busy to come out and an emergency-call handler felt her symptoms didn’t warrant an ambulance.
Eventually her husband of 17 years, TV chef Phil Vickery, rang the doctor’s receptionist – who pulled out all the stops to send an ambulance.
When the mother of four finally reached Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, tests showed she had E.coli bacteria in her blood and several abscesses that required emergency surgery.
Miss Britton told Prima magazine: ‘I was resigned to dying... The theatre nurse offered to put a plaster over my wedding ring. Instead, I took off my ring and gave it to my daughter, who was with me. I hated the thought of them taking it from my dead body to give to her.’
Her health battles were not over, and the star developed pneumonia and her lung collapsed.
She added: ‘Sepsis is deadly but can be beaten if treated quickly. The pain and sense of losing the fight was very strong. Sepsis feels like being run over by a bus and, a year later, I’m still recovering.’
More than 44,000 die of sepsis in the UK every year.
Symptoms include nausea and vomiting, high temperature and confusion. The full interview is in the July issue of Prima, on sale tomorrow.
‘Sense of losing the fight was strong’