LOTTIE PRENTICE GOLDSTONE
“I try to listen to my body. I have come a very long way and have been reassured by my GP that I will make a full recovery”
Sepsis affects 250,000 people in Britain every year, killing more than 50,000. Solicitor and former fivestar event rider Lottie Prentice Goldstone recently developed one of Britain’s biggest killer diseases.
She tells Julie Harding about her brush with death
LOTTIE PRENTICE GOLDSTONE is lying on the f loor of Swindon’s Great Western Hospital’s foyer looking up at a locum doctor. She knows that he’s a locum because she can read the word on his badge. He’s talking to her. She can hear him, but she can’t reply and nor can she move. The inflammation triggered by a sepsis infection is causing collapse, trapping Lottie’s oscillating consciousness within a rapidly paralysing body.
She is lifted onto a trolley, but tortuously slowly, even though she knows that only speed can save her. Thirty minutes previously, when she was still at home, before a high-speed drive to the hospital, she had felt death encroaching, and now it is closing in. But there are rapid footsteps and more doctors. There is momentum, the crisis ward, a cocktail of antibiotics, half-hourly blood pressure checks whose readings are dangerously low, and then, when night turns to day, the culture results come back, the medication changes from random to targeted and the protracted, arduous — but life-affirming — recovery begins.
Mother of three Lottie, a solicitor with Cheltenham firm BPE, a member of Mensa, a children’s author and a former event rider who contested Burghley twice, is now five months post sepsis. She has returned to hacking out, returned to work (part time) and she’s back doing the school run, but while the infection that racked her may have passed, an aftermath remains.
“If I get tired or ill, a cold, f lu, I get muscle weakness. I may start to feel stronger, but it will only take one bad night’s sleep and I’ll be back to square one. When I’m in the office with a lot of people, I find it really hard to concentrate on my work. A day at the office is exhausting and will wipe me out. I can only deal with one child at a time and after a whole day out with the kids [William is eight, Sophie three and Hattie one] I’m flattened the next day. Everything will ache. “I also have to be careful about how far I drive. I went to visit a pony two-and-a-half months post infection and after a long journey, despite lots of breaks, I couldn’t speak or see properly at the end.
“I’ve never actually turned a corner in terms of my recovery — although I did once feel much better, but then I overdid it and I was back to square one. Since then I just gradually do more and then rest. I try to listen to my body. I have come a very long way and have been reassured by my GP that I will make a full recovery.”
Like a certain female former Prime Minister, Lottie once survived on four hours sleep a night. During the 19 remaining hours, she lived a jet-propelled existence, fitting in clients, children, horses, housework, husband and even a flock of sheep, along with some high-octane pursuits, including (once) wing walking.
“I used to do a million things. I took my health for granted for many years and pressed on.”
Before contracting sepsis herself, Lottie already understood its dangers. A friend had been a victim, and she had often seen it cited as a cause of death in legal cases, but she always assumed the victims to be elderly and health compromised, not a super-fit, mega-busy working mother like herself. “Sepsis kills more people than bowel, breast and prostate cancer combined,” says Lottie, repeating a disquieting fact that is often quoted by the Sepsis Trust.
In fact, according to the Trust, in the UK, 51,966 deaths annually (that’s a shocking 142 each day) can be attributed to this ruthless killer. And out of the 250,000 cases in
Britain every year, 40% of survivors are left with a permanent legacy, be that physical, cognitive or psychological. And, in 95% of cases, the cause is never identified.
“That bothered me,” says Lottie. “Anything can spark it — a bite, a thorn, a cold, a sore throat. I will never know what caused mine, apart from the fact that it was maybe because I ran myself ragged.”
It all began for Lottie one Saturday night in early June with what she thought was a bug caused by an exceptionally tough working week. “I had an early night and woke still feeling groggy. I kept feeling progressively worse. William, who was then seven, would bring me drinks and he was even changing Hattie’s nappy. By 11.30am I felt dreadful — seemingly drunk and shaking like a leaf, plus my temperature had gone through the roof. I couldn’t feel my legs below my knees, or my arms below my elbows. My vision was impaired — I had no perception of depth or distance and would go to touch something but find that it was actually further away.
I felt like I was going to die.
“I phoned my mum and told her that she had to come. She arrived with her partner,
John, who we left with the kids and then mum drove me to the hospital.”
Here luck enters the story. Lottie’s mother, a former nurse, recognised her symptoms and knew that there was no time to call an ambulance, hence the white-knuckle ride to the Great Western. There, a particularly perceptive nurse called the crisis team.
During recovery, the usually ebullient Lottie found gloom and despondency descending. “I naively thought that once I was discharged from hospital I would be
better, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I’d sit around in my pyjamas, with the house in a mess and no food in the fridge. I felt so useless. So ashamed. So fed up and cross with myself. From being so fiercely independent, I now couldn’t do anything for myself. I struggled to even stand and brush my teeth without help. My little boy and my mother had to do everything for me, which I found incredibly frustrating, but I had to accept it, take the help and concentrate on getting better.”
One therapy has been riding.
“Riding helps me mentally. I don’t feel so drained, but energised. It’s uncomplicated and free of stress. Stress exacerbates my symptoms,” says Lottie, who once ran an eventing yard and reached the pinnacle of the sport with a horse called Father Jerry (aka Ted), who she produced from a three-year-old. Ted was not only responsible for bringing Lottie and her husband together — Ted decanted a stand-in rider so Lottie returned home early from a holiday to take care of him, went to an impromptu New Year party and was introduced to Bryan — but he also turned his rider into a successful author. Lottie’s A Tale of Ted: A Very Naughty Horse is now a best-selling children’s book. “Storytelling started when I picked up William from nursery. I’d tell him to shut his eyes and that’s when the story would begin.” Lottie has since penned Night Night... My Little Tiger (CBeebies has purchased the TV rights) and tales of a dog called Snorkel, which she completed during her sepsis recovery. A Tale of Spidy on YouTube is a tribute to her much-loved event horse
Cool Decision, Ted’s successor.
Sepsis victims need help to recover. Lottie feels lucky to have been so ably assisted by her mother, Caroline, by Bryan, by her GP and by the Sepsis Trust.
“The Trust contacts me every week. They tell me that what I’ve been through is normal. They say things like, ‘think how far you’ve come’, and, ‘it’s early days still’.” Lottie’s brush with death has been attitude altering.
“I now want to spend more time with my loved ones. It’s been a good leveller. It has made me stop and think. I know that not everything needs to be done at 90 miles an hour, but I’m also keen to spread the message about the dangers of sepsis. You know you have it because you think you are going to die, but by then it may already be too late.”