Surviving Sepsis – Katy’s Story
Katy: [00:00:00] they make it clear that we don’t know what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna do our best. And he said, if you have children or parents that should be called, you should call them and have them fly out here to be with her as soon as they can get here.
Carling: Welcome to the, I did Not Sign Up for this podcast, a weekly show dedicated to highlighting the incredible stories of everyday people. No topic is off limits. Join me as we explore the lives and experiences of guests through thought-provoking, unscripted conversations. And if you enjoy this show and would like to support this podcast, consider joining my Patreon.
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I’m your host Carlin, a Canadian queer identifying 30 something year old, providing a platform for the stories that need to be heard
good. I was gonna say good morning Katie, but I guess it’s afternoon. Hello? Katie?
Is It, morning for you?
Katy: it is. Good [00:01:00] morning here cuz I’m in Hawaii, so I’m five hours
Carling: Oh wow.
Katy: it’s eight o’clock.
Yeah, eight o’clock in the morning. And we do use, even though you’re Canadian, we do use the same time
Carling: Yeah,
Katy: It’s hard for us to talk weather, but we can talk time.
Carling: I have been so stink and excited to meet you and talk to you and hear your story.
Katy: Thank
Carling: And yeah, we were just talking about like mutual people we follow, you follow Laura’s story who talked about being a former crunchy mom
it’s such a, I don’t know. Like we said, the world is so big, but you can make such a nice community out of so many people from all over. Yeah. So I would love it if you could introduce yourself. We’re gonna find where your story starts.
Katy: All right. So my name is Katie Granger, I was a stay-at-home mom until my kids went off to college, and now they’re both graduates. I am, now, I’m just gonna fast forward and then we’ll talk about my story in a minute. I’m on the board of directors of Sepsis Alliance, and you’ll find out why in a minute.
I share my story publicly. I am on TikTok. I [00:02:00] started that I guess it’s been a year and a half. And I’m old to be on TikTok, but I thought it might be a place where I could do, I thought about YouTube, but it’s such a long format. It, or it’s, it can be whatever you want, but it’s generally longer than a few minutes.
And I just was worried that if I got on there, it would be taking up all my time. And I wasn’t sure what content I would share cuz I didn’t know if I wanted to share my whole life with everybody. And I’ve opted out of that. I share a little about my life but it’s really more about this is how you overcome an obstacle. I now share my story very publicly. I’ve done some keynote speeches starting with Sepsis Alliance and then with some of our partners and I’ve just spoke at the hospital that saved my life.
I’m working on a book wanting that to lead to more speaking engagements. Really expanding my story beyond just the sepsis community cuz we’re a fairly small com. Relative to the world population. We’re a fairly small community. But I started realizing that my story resonates so much bigger because I went through something.
Super unexpected. I did not sign up for it. You know, As I mentioned, I love the title of your [00:03:00] podcast and it was just this thing that just threw, could have thrown my life. It could have derailed me permanently, but I didn’t let it. And so then I started realizing people were saying, how did you get through this?
And I started realizing, wow, I really did use some things. There were some techniques and some, tips and ideas and things that I just had to find within myself. And so I just started sharing about that and I had more and more people reaching out and my audience started becoming broader and broader.
It was, it’s a lot of older women, which is great. And I’m happy to speak to younger women. You’re younger and my story appealed to you. Mostly women, men a little bit less, so I don’t know. For whatever reasons, it might be me weeding ’em out a tiny bit just because
Carling: Yeah. That’s fair.
Katy: You just don’t know. Yeah.
You just dunno who’s following you and why they’re following you. So I really love especially talking to women and I think, just for whatever reasons, I think I find my way onto women’s pages more often it’s just been really great sharing my story and finding that so many people can relate to what I’ve been through, even though they’ve been through nothing remotely the same. They’ve had their life thrown off track and they’ve had a big obstacle that they’ve [00:04:00] had to overcome, or they’re working on some obstacle and they’re just trying to figure out, it’s gosh, how do you keep your positive attitude?
And like I say I’m trying to really think about that and figure out what my tips and tricks are and add that to my story and put it into a book. So I’m really excited about that and just hope that I’ll be doing some more speaking and, but my biggest passion is sharing sepsis awareness, so I will definitely squeeze that
Carling: Yeah, no, I think that’s incredible , I listen to a lot of other podcasts like mine and even just hearing people’s stories, even if it’s something that I can’t relate to, I get this sense of. Hope that if I was to face something as catastrophic , that I would be okay if there’s like a sense of okay. Yeah. Like people deal with hard things and we can get through it.
Katy: Yeah. And I find that what happened to me it, it was big because I ended up with amputations and I ended up almost dying. But , you can put the almost dying behind you, but you can’t put the amputations behind you. Yeah, it just ended up being so much more.
However, when I talk to people and I’ve talked to a lot of [00:05:00] people, or they share their stories with me online, oh my gosh, there’s so many worse things and there’s so many things that people get through, but it doesn’t matter, how bad it is. Oftentimes we’re really talking about what’s the worst thing that’s happened to you and the thing that you’ve had to overcome the hardest.
And it might be something kind of small, it might be something that relative to what happened to me? Or my story might relative to someone else, might not be very meaningful. This is the hardest thing that’s ever happened to me. Not a lot of people are gonna go through something like I went through, but there are people out there and I encountered them, who’ve been through far worse.
And they like me, they survive and a lot of them thrive. We don’t get to make the plan. We just have to go
Carling: I love that. So where does your story begin? It begins right where you’re sitting. You had mentioned it started.
Katy: It does, it does, it begins right where I’m sitting. Just a little background. I’m married to my high school sweetheart. We have two daughters, and as I mentioned I, they’re now out of college, but when my story began, my youngest daughter had graduated from high school.
So I was now an empty nester. And I had been a [00:06:00] stay-at-home mom and we’d actually been living on the island, the big island in Hawaii, which is the island of Hawaii where Kona and the volcano are. Sometimes people think that’s Oahu and Oahu is where Honolulu is, and that’s where the big
Carling: Oh, okay.
Katy: Our big city. So they’re different and they both play into my story. We were living over there and when the kids graduated, we decided to move back to Honah where we had lived earlier. We had gone over there for high school for the girls, and I was. This is the funny thing. I did not sign up for this, but I did ask for it because I was spending a lot of time really trying to find myself.
It’s what am I gonna do now that I’m my, I’m a stay-at-home mom with no kids at home. What am I doing now? Am I retired? what is my thing? And I was literally praying for something that would fulfill me a new purpose. And I really wanted to give back. That was a big part.
It was like, I’ve been really fortunate. I don’t need to go back to work, so how can I give? So I was starting to volunteer in my community and we were raising money at the time for a playground [00:07:00] when I got sick. And I was on a committee for that. , And, I thought maybe my thing is to really bring back to my community that I love so much, which is Hawaii and That’s not what my thing is.
It turns out, I’m still doing that a little bit, but the, what ended up happening is I was traveling to see my daughters I noticed when I got off an airplane coming home, it was two years after my daughter graduated. It was her sophomore year of college. I had a small, infected bump on my thumb.
And six months prior we had a huge flood in our valley. And when that happens, we know that there’s bacteria everywhere and it’s really dirty between the flood waters and overflowing septic tanks and cesspools. I will point out right now that word, septic tank, we know that word.
We know, antiseptic, we know that kills germs. What ended up happening to me is I got germs in my body and they made me very sick. And that’s what sepsis is. But didn’t know it was happening, but I did know that it looked like it. I hadn’t seen something like this was a little bit purple and a little weird enough that I thought I’m gonna go to the walk-in clinic, just a little clinic by my house on the way home cuz I’m an hour from the airport.
So I [00:08:00] thought I’m just gonna go there and check it out. Went to the clinic, everything was fine. And it truly was. I was not sick at that point. It hadn’t, sepsis had not set in. I just had a small infection what looked like a small infection. They did a culture and they said, yeah, it does look like it might be staph or something.
So we’re gonna give you an antibiotic for that we’re gonna send you home. And if you get sicker over the weekend, let us know. keep an eye on it and if you need to, you can go into town. But it was, of course, it was a weekend. Everybody always gets sick on weekends, so I would’ve had to go to the emergency room and it’s an hour away.
So I went and got the antibiotic. I grabbed a thermometer when I was there because I just thought well, if this infection’s gonna get bad, I’m gonna have a fever. That’s false, and we’ll talk about that in a minute too. But you do not need to have a fever to be sick. And that’s, I have a couple videos about that, and that’s one of my messages, one of my takeaways.
You do not need to have a fever to be sick. So just if you are feeling sick and your instincts are telling you, it might be more trust, your instincts. The thermometer is telling you the truth, but it’s, first of all, it’s usually off by a degree or two. Our home thermometers are [00:09:00] not great. So we’re, it’s still an estimate, but you don’t need to have that big high fever.
And I didn’t, my fever was actually a little bit low, and that’s not uncommon with sepsis. When you get as sick as I did, it’s not uncommon for it to drop back down or to just never raise up. As a mom, I always believed that was an, I mean, I thought you take their temperature and if they don’t have a fever, you set ’em to school.
It’s that simple. So I made the inverse, conclusion that, then if no fever, then not sick. And that is not right. And I found out most people believe that you do need
a fever.
Carling: the amount of times I’ve been like, to my partner, my mom, be like, do I have a like, touch my head? Is it hot? And if it’s not,
Katy: and usually it is an indication and certainly if you have a fever, something’s going on. But when you’re really sick and that’s where your gut plays in, where you’re like, gosh, I really feel like I’m really sick. Keep listening and keep looking. But I didn’t know any of this. I came home my husband was on a fishing trip I was home alone. And as I said, I’m an hour from the main town, hour from the airport and hospital, and so I’m down in this little valley I was really excited to be by myself for the weekend. I [00:10:00] just thought, this is great. I’m gonna have just this free time I’ve been traveling for two weeks so I’m just gonna kick back and relax. And I was pretty tired that night, which, not unusual cuz I had just been traveling. So I thought I’ll just go to bed early. And I woke up in the morning and I don’t, honestly, I have no memories. I have, I have two memories of this whole weekend even like right after because I ended up. Very sick after this. And so it just erased everything from my brain, either from the drugs or whatever. But what I know from all the text messages I sent is that I was keeping my, I told my husband about the sore. I told him I was, home alone. I called a friend and told her that I was sick because one of my daughter’s friends, crazily actually had gotten sepsis in college.
And she got so sick from strep throat that she nearly died and she ended up losing one of her leg, one of her lower legs from sepsis, first time I’d ever heard of this. And I was like, that is the craziest thing that’s ever happened. New family rule. No one’s ever sick alone. You always tell your roommate.
And it was actually a rule for the kids in college. , and then all of a sudden I realized, I’m like I’m home alone. [00:11:00] This applies to me. So I called my friend, I said, Hey I’m back in town. I’m alone. I have this thing on my hand. I’m really tired, I feel okay, but can you check on me in the morning?
So I got up the next morning, bright and early in, because my record that I have this weekend is my phone. First thing I did was text her and said, Hey, I feel great. Don’t worry about
me. Which is so funny. I know. So then she’s like, okay, I won’t worry. That’s not entirely true. She did check in a little bit, but I never let her come over.
She texted me a couple times. I’m like, I’m fine. I’m fine. Which is what people default to. So I also encourage people really trust your gut. And even though you wanna tell everybody, you’re fine, really take a pause and ask yourself, are you really fine? and then if you’re the person asking somebody check on them and say, okay, you said you were sick yesterday.
How are you feeling now? Go through their body if you need to having any headaches, you having any stomach? Are you tired? Just check on ’em just to make sure. Cuz I think we tend to minimize, we wanna let people think we’re okay all the time, in that habit. So anyways, spent the day alone.
I threw up partway through the day and sent my [00:12:00] husband a text cuz apparently that’s something you tell people. And I said, Hey, I just threw up, but don’t worry about it because I’m sure it was cuz I took an antibiotic on an empty stomach. So I took an antibiotic, which means that I was feeling worse.
I don’t remember this, but I wouldn’t have been taking the antibiotic and I wasn’t eating because my stomach was empty. And this was like a. At one o’clock in the afternoon. Indication there that I probably wasn’t great and I, I wasn’t taking great care of myself, so I just ended up spending the day in bed, I think. I ended up on Sunday morning waking up at the crack of dawn and I remember there were roosters crowing. The sun was just coming up. It was dark outside. We have roosters in hon and that’s your little alarm clock. I woke up and it was kind of dark and what I remember is I woke up and there was, it was almost like there was, someone woke me up and said, you need to tell them how to get into the house. This is like the message that I heard in my brain. And I remember sitting, I probably didn’t sit up, I probably just opened my eyes and rolled over cuz I was pretty weak at the time. I just grabbed my phone and I texted her and said, the code box [00:13:00] is right in front of my car and this is the code. And then I fell back asleep. Next thing I remember is waking up and my friend is in my room and I don’t remember seeing her. I just remember, maybe my eyes are closed even. And hearing, oh my God, Katie. Oh my God. Oh my god, Katie. And I remember thinking, wow, gosh, I must really be sick if she’s freaking out like this. And she found me lying naked in my bed cuz it was so dang hot here. And I’m alone. So I’m naked in my bed, like on top of the covers. I think I’d taken a shower to cool down I am. Passed out basically. I didn’t really respond when she came into the room.
She’s freaking out and now I’m probably kind of semial alert and trying to wake myself up, but I can barely wake up and she’s terrified. So she comes over and tries to sit me up, gets me outta the house. Anyways, long story short, she’s able to slowly get me outta the house. I’m complaining that my feet hurt.
And it turns out that in the middle of the night, or possibly right before I made this phone call, I probably got up to go to the bathroom and my bathroom was two steps up from my bedroom. We’ve actually remodeled it since then [00:14:00] and taken that out. it used to be that you had to go up two steps to get into the bathroom, and in the middle of the night, I had little lights that would automatically turn on.
And we weren’t here full time, so sometimes the batteries can out. So I’m not sure if I, if the batteries were out or if I passed out, but I had an abrasion on my knee, so I clearly fell. And a big bruise. I think what happened is I was probably coming down the steps of the bathroom and my left foot hit a step wrong and broke an broke a little bone. I sprained my ankle and so I crawled into bed. And so I’m trying to stand up and I’m complaining I can’t walk. And so she’s like, oh my God, you’re like passed out. You can’t walk. I don’t know what’s going on. So she offered to call an ambulance. I refused. I just said, I was thinking I wasn’t that sick and I was thinking, this is silly. I probably just need an iv. I’m probably just dehydrated. So I, maybe I did throw up more the last day or I just wasn’t getting up to drink.
I don’t know. Regardless, I was very sick. I had bacteria coursing through my body and it was at this point gonna take me down if I didn’t get to a hospital. So she basically loaded me into her [00:15:00] car, called a friend who’s a firefighter and said, She doesn’t want an ambulance. And he said, that’s fine.
Just start driving to the hospital. And there’s three different spots where there, there are, ambulance is along the way. It’s an hour drive, and they’re like, every 20 minutes , that’s where they keep the ambulances. And the first ones honestly are 20 minutes that direction. So it really did make sense maybe to at least drive toward them.
So she did that and I was doing okay in the backseat. And so she kept going. We got about 10 minutes out and I started crying and saying, my hands and feet are on fire now. She’s terrified. So she calls the hospital and says, I don’t know what’s going on. She is super not okay. This is not just the flu, hands and feet on fire.
She can’t sit up. I guess I tried to sit up earlier and I was just like, really? It was like my blood pressure was probably low , so she asked them to meet us with a gurney and they did. And when we got there, they got me on the gurney. They took me inside, took my blood pressure.
It was 50 over 30, which is. So incredibly low. It’s just barely anything. And so they, and when [00:16:00] your blood pressure drops, like drops like that, it’s an indication that you’re in shock. And with my hands and feet being on fire, this probably is letting them know that something’s going on with my circulation to my hands and feet.
And so they were very concerned immediately that it could be sepsis. Sepsis is your body’s overreaction to an infection. . It’s a reaction that can get triggered on occasion and your body basically goes a little bit high haywire. And instead of just fighting the infection, it starts basically sending out whatever it sends out and it starts attacking your own body.
It takes this infection, which might have been, bad in itself and it just takes it and makes it 10 times worse. It just all of a sudden takes what you might have been able to fight with antibiotics and makes it something that you are now fighting for your life. So they immediately drew blood.
Started giving me fluids and gave me antibiotics. A broad spectrum, which means they give you like five different types of antibiotics cuz they don’t know what I have and they took a culture of my finger, but that takes four days to grow a culture. So [00:17:00] they’re hoping they’ll find something in my blood.
with sepsis, it’s a syndrome. It’s not just a disease. I had an infection. That’s what was caused me to be sick. The sepsis in my body’s overreaction made it worse. And then they have to try and determine what’s going on. So they’re hoping they can find the source of the infection and then if they can target the antibiotics to it.
Waiting for the test to come back. And the test, they’re looking for different markers that we don’t need to go into, but it’s like creatinine and lactate and just weird things that we don’t know about.
But they’ve done a blood analysis and they’re looking for these certain markers and if they’re off, it’s a concern. And I had multiple markers that made it clear that I probably had sepsis. And with the drop blood pressure, it means I’m in septic shock.
And at this point it means my life is at risk my body is either pushing the blood outta my extremities Now, because my organs, your body has a natural tendency to, to save your organs cuz you cannot live without them. You need them all. so it pushes the blood out from my limbs into my core.
So that may have been part of what was going on with my [00:18:00] fingers, but the concern that they had, and we did confirm it, is that I had a secondary condition called d i c or disseminated intervascular coagulation where it ends up making your vessels burst in your extremities your fingers and toes and hands and feet.
And it can slowly work its way up your arms. And so you get bursted blood vessels, then your platelets go out and clot them. So you have both bleeding and clotting going on in your body. It’s really bad. And with that, I had a really high chance of losing part of my limbs, which did indeed happen.
And so they’re really concerned. I’m extremely ill. So first they’re concerned at saving my life, and then they’re trying to save my limbs. But the first concern is trying to save my life, even if it cost me my limbs, because this is the only way I’m gonna survive. And you think back to when antibiotics were invented and we know that so many people used to die. I would’ve been dead.
Carling: Yeah.
Katy: I would’ve been the first one. It’s like somebody, this sick is gonna be the first to go. So this is one of the things, because of antibiotics, we can treat sepsis or we can at least try to treat sepsis. [00:19:00] There’s 1.7 million cases per year in the United States, and about 350,000 people will die from it.
And with Covid it’s even gotten higher because the people who are getting they got covid. And then what would happen is they’d get really sick, their lungs would start to harden, and then they could become sicker either with the covid or with pneumonia. And then they start becoming more likely to end up getting sepsis.
And so some of the people who died did actually get sepsis because of the covid. So sepsis can happen with a virus. A bacteria, a parasite or a fungus. So any infection, any of those things can cause an infection. Once you get that infection, it can become sepsis. It used to be thought of people used to talk in, they used to call it blood poisoning.
When I was growing up, they used to talk about blood poisoning and your blood is, you do have bacteria in your blood. We no longer call it that in their, I don’t think they were exactly the same thing, but a lot of people know that idea of getting bacteria in your bloodstream. So this infection that was on my finger, [00:20:00] honestly, mine was likely a secondary infection.
I probably had something going on somewhere else. We never found what the cause was. It may have just been that bacteria got in through my finger and it was just sitting there and maybe over the last week or so it had been breeding in my body and had just gotten outta control. It may have been something as simple as that.
It can happen from something as simple as a. Bug bite. Skin is a big way for an infection to enter your body. The other things that are big are like pneumonia, urinary tract infections. One of my most popular TikTok videos starts with, do you know that a urinary tract infection or a bladder infection could kill you?
I want to get the attention of, especially all the young people. I used to get them, commonly and we just were like, oh, I’ve had a few. So it must not be a big deal. No, it, it really is serious. You’ve gotta get treatment. Anyways, so I’m in the hospital.
They realize how sick I am. They realize that I need to be transferred to another hospital. I’m receiving oxygen. My oxygen levels are low, even on a high level of oxygen into my body. I start with a little cannula in [00:21:00] my nose in the beginning, and then eventually it’s a mask that’s forcing air down into my lungs when I inhale. And then overnight that first night, they couldn’t get me over to the other hospital. They were, first of all, they were worried that I wasn’t stable enough for the flight. It’s only like a 30 minute flight. But any transfer by ambulance or by air ambulance, you’re out of the hospital.
You don’t have everything there that could save. they obviously have some things, but they don’t have everything there. So it’s really dangerous. I think unfortunately, a lot of people who are as sick as I was, can die in transport. So they’re really concerned. They needed to balance, they’re like, we need to get you over there because we need you to have all of the things that they can do for you, but we don’t want you to die on the
way.
Carling: where’s Your husband at this point?
Katy: Oh my gosh. He is in Idaho fishing with no idea what’s going on. Last he knows maybe is that I had thrown up but it, but don’t worry about it because it was just because I had that, so he doesn’t know yet. My friend is, has reached out to my daughter, who is, she just, my oldest daughter had just graduated college.
She’s at her new job. She’s only been there a couple weeks. She [00:22:00] loves it. It’s the career she, she studied for, she’s working for a commercial real estate company and she’s got this great job in San Diego on the coast. It’s just, it’s like super cute and she’s just loving her life and she gets the phone call and she’s the one whose friend had sepsis.
She gets a phone call from Tiffany saying Your mom has sepsis and she’s really sick. And my daughter is just literally can’t think of any worse thing you would’ve said to me because my friend almost died from it. And now you’re telling me my mom has it. so she had to be the adult, so she’s trying to call everybody.
My husband was with his two brothers, so we made it a family event, but he’s with his two brothers fishing. And so my sister-in-law was trying to reach them. And everybody at this point, there’s a whole chain of people trying to scramble and reach each other. One of my friends immediately found out I was sick, knew that Scott couldn’t be with me and hopped on an airplane and started heading my direction.
So she actually got there on Saturday night and she knew my daughters couldn’t be there, and she was just like, I don’t want them to go yet. I’ll go. She used to come visit, she still does, comes and visits me [00:23:00] at least twice a year. So she’s, she knows the flights and so she’s like, oh, there’s one this afternoon, I’m on it. And she works for Microsoft, so she just grabbed a bag of work and hopped on a plane and just headed my way, which is amazing. And just to this day just warms my heart to know that she would do that for me. And so my husband didn’t know yet. He didn’t know until no, that’s not true in the morning.
He did know. He didn’t know until late on Saturday. So that was my first day in the hospital. And Saturday night. The other thing that started happening is my hands started turning purple at the base, by my wrist on the inside of my palms.
And then I started getting a little blotchy skin. And that’s one of the symptoms of sepsis. If someone gets any blotches on their skin, little bruise looking things. Get to the hospital immediately if you’re feeling sick. Because what’ll happen is you’ll get an infection that’s somewhere that, like on my thumb, but then you’ll start feeling like you have the flu.
So the other thing I tell people, if you have the flu, keep it the back of your mind. You, I’m sure you don’t have sepsis, but watch for some of the indicators. And I will tell you that before we go to, so they’re trying to get me there. My husband is now trying to get out he was in Idaho, they’re driving to Salt Lake City, [00:24:00] which is where my brother-in-law lives and where the car belongs that they’re in. My husband is on the phone trying to reach everybody that’s, giving him information and he’s just scrambling to get to me. So his plan was to get there. My sister-in-law booked him a flight that he would leave early on Monday morning. Which was the next day. He would leave early on Monday morning, catch a flight, and then he, because of the time change, it’s noon where you are, but it’s eight where I am.
So same for him. So he could leave on a 7:00 AM flight, but it was like the middle of the night for me. So he was still able to get in fairly early. And he actually got there about an hour before I ended up getting to Honolulu. He flew into Honolulu and then he knew he could always catch a connector over to the island. I was on Kauai. Everybody’s hope at this point was that we’d get me over to the bigger hospital because I was so sick. So we did get me over. I was stable enough. But I also think I was getting sick enough that they’re like, we just gotta get you there. So I flew to Queens apparently from my friend who was on the plane with me. I was very sick. My blood pressure was really low, the whole flight. They were just busy around me the whole time. And they were [00:25:00] trying to keep her distracted saying, Hey, you might wanna videotape, this is a really cool view of the island.
And so she, and she laughed about it cuz she goes, I don’t know why I have these videos on my phone. And I reminded her, I said, no, you told me that they were telling you to take videos. And we just laughed about it cuz we’re like, they were just trying to distract her cuz I was not doing well.
And anyways, we. Touchdown on Oahu. And again, now we’re on the, now we’re on the island that’s most populated with the big hospital. We get in an ambulance, fly through to the hospital, and my husband meets us there. I’m immediately whisked into the icu and it’s, again, it’s like you’ve seen the scene in the movie where he runs up to the gurney and he literally, they’re like, who are you?
And he says, I’m the husband. And he says, sit down. She’s not stable. And they whisk me away and I’m swollen with all this fluid in my body. I look horrible. I’ve got an, I’m intubated. Which is where they put a tube down your throat. I’m now in a drug-induced coma. He is horrified. I look horrible.
And it’s, and he’s [00:26:00] scared the way that they’re acting. Understandably. And so they come out and they explain to him that I am very sick. They don’t know what will happen. They’re they’re not making him any promises. They’re using a lot of kind of, Beating around the bush.
I don’t think at this point say she might die, but they make it clear that we don’t know what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna do our best. Those kind of things. They’re saying the things that you’ve heard in movies, but you never wanna hear yourself. And and he said, if you have children or parents that should be called, you should call them and have them fly out here to be with her as soon as they can get here. And so he called my kids. It actually I’ve actually found out, I’ve told this story a certain way and I found out I wasn’t exactly accurate. My sister-in-law’s a doctor. And she’s on the mainland, and she was overseeing my care. The prior 24 hours she was communicating with the hospital on my behalf and with the hospital I was in. Because Scott couldn’t reach me, I told them, you tell her everything. She’s my representative. So she was following closely. She understood d i c It’s very rare. It [00:27:00] happens in a very small percentage of sepsis cases. Septic shock is also more rare. I was incredibly sick. She understood that my life was on the line.
And so she called my daughter, and had told her, , my daughter just told me this, and she said, I was just mind my, I was on my way to work and I was just like, yeah, everything. My mom’s gonna be okay. They got her to the hospital, now she’s gonna be fine. I think you want, you wanna hope these things.
And I think she was just in the denial world that we, that I was in also on Saturday when I was getting so sick, my sister-in-law said, what are you doing? She said, I’m going to work. And she said, no, you’re not. You gotta go to your mom, you gotta get to her as fast as you can. , this is really serious. I don’t know the order of things, but anyways she bought a ticket, whether she went into work or what bought a ticket called her sister who was in Los Angeles. She was in San Diego.
And so my older daughter’s flight would fly through LA said, we’re on this flight. You’re meeting me in la. Just get on a plane and we’ll tell your your professors later.
And so they did that. I have to say her work was really cool. She worked for this amazing woman and she just, she told her what was going on and [00:28:00] she said, Danny, go to your mom. Do not look back. Don’t come home until she’s better and your job is waiting for you.
Do not think about us. I don’t, the only reason I want you to call me is I’m worried and I’d love an update, but you don’t have to do anything. Just go and take care of her most incredible, amazing woman, an amazing company. And they made it easy for her to come back. And you’ll see it was like three months later before she went back to work.
And they were incredible. They were so amazing. But she flew to the kids flew in that first night that I was there. So yeah, they did get there pretty quickly. At that point, my husband understood that I might not survive, and it had been made clear to him. He, we’d been there all day and they were doing things, and so he came to the kids and let them know that it was very serious and that they needed to pray for me to make it through the night and that I would get better. So they were all having to deal with that. I’m missing all of this, I’m out. So I don’t know how serious it is, but I just think of my family all the time in that situation. I can’t imagine. It just makes me so sad. The thought, honestly, the [00:29:00] thought of my husband losing his high school sweetheart and my children losing their mom, it’s That’s the part, it’s not me dying.
That’s as sad as just them, , what their loss is gonna be. It’s very strange the way you look at it when you’re in it. But I ended up spending five days in the icu. They watched my hands and feet turn more and more purple they were really scared. I’m, look, again, looking back at the photos, which is the log that we have of what went on and my husband started a, they or my kids started a Facebook page cuz that’s where I communicate with all my friends. As we all know, old ladies are all on Facebook.
Everybody’s mom is on Facebook. We took it over, we took it over 10 years ago and, and made everybody mad. You guys, all the younger people had to move to Instagram and whatnot. They started a private Facebook page so that they could just give very thorough updates and they made a really nice record that I’m now able to go back to as I’m working on my book and see what all went on. But they had this horrifying week. I got to sleep through it. And then on my daughter, my older daughter’s 23rd birthday was the day that I was finally [00:30:00] strong enough.
Thank God that they could extubate me. They would take the tube outta my throat and bring me out of the coma. I remember it was a Saturday and. I woke up to this very uncomfortable feeling of this. They a woman speaking loud in my ear, waking me up, saying, Katie, you’re in the icu, you’re in the hospital, you’re very sick.
You have a tube down your throat helping you breathe. We’re gonna remove that now on the count of three, I want you to cough. And I still remember this clearly. And then she’s like, 1, 2, 3, and then I cough. And it actually takes much longer than you hope that you cough and it’s out. But it’s not that simple.
I felt like I was choking and it was very unpleasant. So I was really disoriented. I’m getting woken up and I’m trying to figure out, am I napping? What’s going on? Like why, who’s this lady? What’s happening? But in the process of waking up, my hands went in front of my face and I saw that my fingertips were black.
And what it ends up causing is gangrene. So you’ve. Probably seen it in some movie about someone freezing out in the cold. It’s like these blackened fingertips. And even in the [00:31:00] state that I was in, I saw these fingertips and my, I just said, my fingers are dead. Like they’re gonna have to go.
And I, I couldn’t even think about we’re gonna have to remove them. I couldn’t even. I couldn’t even in my brain say the word amputate. That’s just such a scary word now. I say it all the time and it’s just not, it’s honestly, our limbs are expendable and it’s crazy to think that. But given the choice of saving my life or saving my fingers, they wouldn’t have been able to save my fingers. It just wouldn’t have happened. It was too late. And that’s why I’m so passionate about spreading awareness, which I will do before we leave, is how to know is it the flu or am I sicker than that?
And it doesn’t happen to most people. It’s not likely to happen to most people, but you are likely to know someone that it’s gonna happen to. And so it’s just like if everybody educated all their friends about it and knew, and we knew the signs and symptoms because I could have, had I been checking like my breathing rate and heart rate and just really testing my gut, did I feel sicker than I’d ever felt?
Yes, I did. And I think that’s when I finally called for help. But Had I known a little [00:32:00] more, I would’ve done it sooner. Had I done it sooner, I would maybe would still have my fingers and I would maybe still have my feet. I don’t ever look back and have regrets other than I just wish that more people knew about this.
So now I’m able to do something about it. And I mentioned, how I had asked for this in a way because I was asking for a purpose. I was asking, I was, I’m a Christian, but I’m also, I believe in all of it, and I’m, I put energy out into the universe and I put my hands on Mother Earth as I sit on her.
And I just pray that, our energy can combine and that what is best for me will happen. I’m willing to I like it all. I just like the idea of putting it out into the universe in whatever way. And I’m, I, like I say, raised a Christian, and so I’m praying and I’m like, come on, God, let’s make this happen.
Let’s find me something really cool. And he did. And it’s crazy to realize that I’m actually, in some ways, I think my life is fuller now than it would’ve been. As much as I also, during my day, I’m frustrated all day long that I’m an amputee, but it’s just, it’s the craziness of life. So anyways I lost a ton of weight. I couldn’t keep [00:33:00] food down. They never found the pathogen, which is confusing to people. We think that you just stick, you, you take a little swab, put it on a thing, it’s gonna grow out, and it’s just gonna, there’s a little flag that’s gonna come up that says it’s staff, or it’s.
Strep, but it’s not that clear. We have, we’ve been sick all our lives. We have a lot of stuff flowing through our bodies. Some of it’s active, some of it’s not. Some of it’s causing us damage. Some of it’s not, it’s just not as easy to figure out. And I had taken a couple antibiotics, if not a few, and we don’t, I don’t know how many. So I had to stay on the broad spectrums. They were working. I did get better. But I wasn’t able to eat and keep food down for a month. Stuff was just going through me.
They did everything they could to save my hands and feet and they saved my hands. So you can see, and everyone else can’t, but literally my hands right now, I’m missing. Either the top joint or the top two joints on seven of my fingers, I still have one of my pinkies, one of my thumbs and another thumb.
So I think we all know the thumbs are the most important thing. So thank you God for my thumbs cuz my hands work well. The Pinky’s great because it makes [00:34:00] my hand longer so I can carry things like I can carry a cup otherwise I’d have to carry everything with two hands all the time. so that’s just a real relief.
It feels a little weird having this pinky sticking out, but the part that’s missing is exactly what was black in the beginning, minus like maybe a quarter inch because they have to wrap the skin around the tips of my fingers. And so they did a really good job of saving everything that hadn’t already died.
And I did that through treatments that are they’re testing these out. It’s like they, they work, sometimes they don’t always work, but nitroglycerin cream on my hands and then spending time in a hyperbaric chamber. And I did that for the month that I was in the hospital. I did it like every other day.
And that hyper oxygenates your body, it’s really good for wound healing. And it was good for my lungs, which had failed. I didn’t even mention my kidney failed, my liver failed, my lungs were failing. You can presume that my brain is also depleted of oxygen because of the inflammation in my body. I usually describe it simply as just saying, it happens to your hands and feet, but it also happens to [00:35:00] your organs. So I presumably have some DIC damage within my internal organs. However, they’re now all functioning at a hundred percent.
They may not be a hundred percent. Great. There might be a little bit of damage to each of them, but they’re functioning at a hundred percent, which is what matters. I’m doing really well. I’m really, I have my health and I was fortunate that I was not disfigured. My nose was purple in the beginning and just the tip of my nose, it didn’t spread too much.
I didn’t end up losing that. Some people do, some people lose up into their arms. There’s people who’ve lost most of their arms and most of their legs and damage to their face. And we’re all really fortunate to be alive. And like I say, we’re not for modern medicine. There’s a whole community that wants to really do everything naturally. And I embrace that community and I’m like, good on you. Try natural things. But as soon as you realize that they’re not working or your condition’s getting worse, switch over to Western medicine.
Go get an antibiotic. We lose so many less people since antibiotics. So go ahead and try stuff for a little bit, but then learn the signs of [00:36:00] sepsis, learn the signs of any serious thing going on in your body. Like we should all understand when we should go to the hospital.
And I’m actually trying to work with some doctors so I can put that in my book. So I can have a, this is like a cheat sheet, like when these things all start happening, whether it’s a heart attack or whether it’s stroke, or whether it’s sepsis, I’m hoping that we can figure out like a crossover.
And I’m sure that, and I’m not reinventing the wheel, I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. I just need to find good source that’s done it or done a study to really figure out, these are things, we all know, if you’re bleeding a lot, you need to go, or if you have a really deep cut. And then I think we understand the, pressure in our chest or diff difficulty breathing.
So what I like to say, so sepsis Alliance uses the acronym time, T I M e T is for temperature, which can be high or it can be low or I just say, don’t worry cuz even if it’s low, it’s not super low. So even if you don’t have a fever, I just say to people, keep looking.
But if you do have a low fever and it’s consistently low, go into the doctor, something’s going on. Especially if you’re feeling sick, so if you have an infection, that’s the i t I is for [00:37:00] infection, M is for mental decline and E is for extremely ill.
So temperature high or low, it happens with an infection. I like to remind people, I’m sorry to say it, but you don’t always know when you have an infection but if you do have a clear infection and then you’re starting to feel sick, E is for extremely ill. And I mentioned earlier, I think at that morning I woke up and I recognized and my gut told me, you’re not okay.
You’re really sick. You need help. Because we don’t often just say, take me to the hospital. In fact we all hesitate to say that cuz it’s so dramatic. So if anyone ever tells you, I feel like I’m gonna die, I’ve never been so sick, I just, some something’s wrong. I just, this doesn’t feel like the flu, something’s wrong.
Trust them and get them to the hospital and let the hospital decide. And that’s what my message is really we need to take charge. We’ve gotta get ourselves there before they can save us. And if we get ourselves there and we’re already at the place where we’re gonna lose our hands and feet because we missed everything, they can’t undo what’s already been done.
So if we can get ourselves to the hospital sooner, that’s [00:38:00] gonna be a huge important thing. And statistically speaking, enough. People do not know about sepsis. We just, there’s not been a great PR campaign for it. It’s like we know about heart attack, we know about strokes. So Sepsis Alliance has the acronym time.
We’re getting that out there. There’s other organizations You know what? I should know the Canadian one and I apologize. And I think it’s, I think it might be Canadian Sepsis Alliance or but, and they’re a little, they’re a smaller organization, but they also have programs. We all work together.
There’s a UK sepsis trust. There’s a global sepsis alliance, which we helped found. And sepsis Alliance is the largest, , but then each country has a program. So we really, globally, we are becoming more aware of sepsis, but I, my opinion is it needs to be on people’s radar, just like stroke and heart attack.
They need to know the signs. Two other things, and this applies to everything that I always add for people, especially now after C O V I D, people have those pulse oximeters If you’re using your pulse oximeter and your pulse is over a hundred, that’s a concern. And your blood oxygen.
I, I don’t know the exact number that we [00:39:00] use for that. When it becomes a problem, I’m gonna say maybe 92, but when, if it’s getting under 95 and it’s consistently under there, I would go to a trusted source like the CDC in the United States or sepsis Alliance Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, just a big organization, and find out, where you should be concerned about your blood oxygen levels.
But if your heart rate is over a hundred beats per minute and or your breathing rate is over 20 breaths per minute, that’s a sign that you’re struggling for oxygen. And so no matter what your condition is, Get yourself to the hospital. And it might happen because of sepsis, it might just happen, because of pneumonia or a heart attack.
But all of these things are serious. Obviously, as one of my friends says, and she’s not the first P person to say this, but the first place I heard it is, your vital signs are vital. They’re vital. They’re called that for a reason. You know, need to have a strong, good rhythmic heart rate that’s in the appropriate range.
Our breathing rate needs to be in the appropriate range. Our blood pressure needs to be appropriate and [00:40:00] our temperature should be in a normal range. And now we’ve learned that normal, is a pretty small window and it can be either higher or lower to mess it up. And these are indicators that we need to get in. And trust your gut, if something’s telling you it, it’s not right, then get some help and make sure that someone else is looking after you. And if you are a friend of somebody or a parent of somebody, or the child, like my parents, I check them on the phone. Like If they, yeah, I’ve been sick, and I’m like, really? Okay, can you take a minute and check your heart rate while I have you on the phone? Another thing I tell people, this is so important, you guys, if a person is sick and you’re communicating with them, call them and say, pick up the phone. I just wanna talk to you for a second. And they’re, and what I did all day long, and I have texts that say it over and over and say, I’m really tired. Let’s just text. Cause I had a couple people say, Hey, do you wanna talk? Cuz I was alone and . I’m like, nah, I’m resting. I just made excuses. So don’t let, if you know someone’s sick, don’t let ’em make excuses. Check on them and just call and just really ask ’em how they’re feeling and find out if you can see any of these signs.
Carling: we [00:41:00] interviewed, I interviewed a girl, Olivia, who had toxic shock syndrome, and she had, yeah, she had texted a friend and was like, oh, I don’t feel good. I’m gonna lay down. And then they found her the next day. EMS found her and she was unconscious, and yeah, that idea that just let somebody know you’re not feeling good. And if you know someone’s not feeling good, just check in on them
Katy: yeah. And like I did I started off cuz I called my friend and I said, call me in the morning. And I even said, just set an alarm on your phone at 9:00 AM and call me. So I even reminded her to remind herself. And I did that because, and not be, God, I never in a million years even I look at it and I feel like lightning hit twice in the same place because it gets my daughter’s best friend and her mom.
It’s that’s statistically not very likely. And the fact that I knew someone who became an amputee because of sepsis that I became, that is not very likely, but it happens that’s not the way the world works. Statistics don’t work. They don’t say, oh, you already know somebody, so you’re not gonna have it happen.
And it also doesn’t mean this was sad for me to figure out. It also [00:42:00] doesn’t mean something else couldn’t happen to me. And for a while I thought, okay, I’ve paid my dues. And then I started reminding myself, no, you haven’t. There’s no such thing, you know, so , I’m still reminding myself the signs of stroke and heart attack and because anything else could still happen to me,
Carling: and I think too, as women, it seems like we’re always told Oh, like it’s not that bad. know, don’t bother
Katy: Yeah. And
that’s another tip I, and that will be a section in my book too, is how to tell your doctor and how to approach your doctor. So you do, I think men and women, but I agree, women tend to get it more, but what often happens is we get anxious and we go in and we’re anxious and then we become to the doctor a little bit less trustworthy cuz they’re like, oh, she’s scared. I can see it in her. She’s really anxious, so these things might be not as big a deal as what she thinks they are. So they will minimize because of your reaction. For those of us who practice like mindfulness and just calming, I really encourage everybody, calm yourself before you talk to your doctor. Get your medications handy. Get your symptoms [00:43:00] really at the top.
Tell ’em the most important things that are happening. Tell ’em why you came in. What was telling you that you weren’t okay? And stress those things. Don’t start telling ’em about all the things that have happened in the last six weeks. They’re gonna need to know that, but the more you tell them about.
Oh, I’ve got all these medical conditions, don’t start there. Tell them why it’s concerning you on its own what it is, and then go ahead and share your other conditions and go in there with a positive attitude. This person is on your side. They are the person that is gonna save your life re regardless.
Everybody’s not gonna be to the place that they need their life saved, but if you were that person you’re talking to right there, that doctor is that person. You want them on your side and you want them to hear you and they, you don’t want ’em to minimize. And so you, we have responsibility too on our end as patients to try and get that out to the medical people that we’re talking to. In my case I had, I would’ve had severe mental decline. And I definitely was really tired and drowsy and just wouldn’t have been, I wouldn’t have been good to communicate with.
I had a friend [00:44:00] there who could say, no, this is not her at all.
But here’s the other thing. It wasn’t sepsis for me on Friday evening, but it was on Sunday morning. It most likely was on Saturday night. And with every hour that you wait to get help, it’s an 8% chance higher that you’ll die.
So for every hour that you wait, 8% more chance. So presumably I had it the night before and I just let myself fall asleep. Probably it was late and I didn’t wanna bother anybody and I just thought, it’s the flu. I’ll just try and sleep through it and hopefully I’ll be better in the morning. And instead I woke up in the morning.
And how many hours went by? 10 80% higher chance of dying? I was definitely, by the time I lived. Every doctor who came in my room was like, I can’t believe you’re alive. You look so good to see your eyes open. Oh, this is incredible. You’re a miracle. They truly, they’re like most people that get as sick as I did, do not live for them.
Those are the people who die. my friends who I meet that are multiple amputees, we all got that sick. and the great thing is the people I meet are sharing their stories and helping others learn about it. So it’s cool to teach about, [00:45:00] how to recognize something that could save your life, but then also in the midst of it all, also spreading awareness about disability.
And it’s the truth is they were expendable. That’s the honest truth. And I’m missing both my lower legs. I have two lower leg prosthesis that I have to put on every day, and I have to wear around every day. And I don’t have one good leg to stand on. I’m always jealous of the single leg amputees. I’m like, at least they can lean on that side, but who care? It
doesn’t matter. You
Carling: So did they amputate under the knee or above the knee?
Katy: So they amputate below the knee. And oftentimes people think that means, like right below it actually means it just below knee amputation is anything below your knee.
So really it means I lost my foot and my ankle and in an ideal situation, you’re gonna have a longer limb. My, I probably lost six inches up from the ground, we’ll say. And and then that place is ideal for them to amputate. Honestly, my damage was a little bit lower, but you don’t, some people have had this done, but it’s.
Prosthetics are gonna work better if they go above the [00:46:00] ankle. And there’s a lot of people walking around with a partial foot and that can work really well. There’s some people walking around who have a disarticulated ankle, which means that they go through the ankle. It’s harder to get a foot to work that way.
It actually makes it harder for you to walk cuz you don’t have you, you don’t have that that six inches or that, that four more inches in with taller people, it’s more to put a little to put some type of, an working functioning ankle device attached to your prosthetic foot. And so it’s a real ideal spot where I’m amputated, so my prosthetics work very well for me.
And so if you have a little bit extra it’s called a residual limb. The part that’s left over. Some people call it other things. I don’t like any of the slang words for it. Personally, I don’t have any nicknames or anything I call it. In fact, it was cute, my, my family in the hospital cuz I said, I can’t believe I, I’m not, cuz I’m not gonna have any legs, and they’re like, yes you do. You’re gonna have legs. You’re still gonna have legs. And I’m like, what do I call it after, I’m like, I don’t know what I’m gonna call it. And they’re like, you call it your leg. And I just, I think like one of my daughters said that and I was just like, thank you.
You’re [00:47:00] absolutely right. It is still a leg and I’m not ashamed, it’s a residual limb. It’s it’s fine. And any of the slang terms you wanna call it, and I don’t mind if someone calls it the wrong thing to me, I correct them and just say, I just call it my leg or my residual limb,
Carling: Would you say, was it more difficult adjusting to losing partial fingers or adapting to the loss of the lower limb?
Katy: That’s a great question. I think , in the beginning, to me they were equal because your hands are so important and they were stiff. I couldn’t bend them. They They weren’t. I just, I, my thumbs always worked and I used them a lot. In fact, that’s how I would use my phone for everything cause I could just place my hand behind my phone and then my thumbs work perfectly.
So I was constantly using my phone to text and type and I learned how to use the voice to text. Application, although it never gets anything right, it’s almost as much trouble as typing. But it is hard for me to type cuz my fingers are so small. But the answer in the beginning is that they’re both difficult.
I had occupational therapy for my hands where we’d work on bending my knuckles and getting them to bend and over time now everything [00:48:00] bends fine. And then teaching me workarounds for doing things and getting my sensitivity up. So I would have, my occupational therapy I had a bag at home that I had put little objects into and then I would go in and try and identify them.
And at first it was like bigger, it was things that were very different. Like a, a paradise and a dime and, a quarter, two coins that are very different size and a puzzle piece and a paperclip and a toothpick or whatever. And they’re all different enough. But then I would start putting things that were more similar, like nickels and pennies, you know, and, other little square things. And slowly over time I got better at identifying things with my hands, cuz that is something that you don’t think about how often you shove your hand into your purse and pull out the right thing, and it was just teaching my brain to connect with those nerves and my fingers. I think I do a lot of it with my thumbs, and my, that I, the identification. They work great now, and I barely think about ’em now. I pretty much only think about my legs. In fact I sometimes forget to even say about my hands and people often don’t notice my [00:49:00] hands cuz you can see, I talk with them a lot. I’ll just quickly, the end of my story is I ended up flying to Seattle, which is where we had lived before we moved to Hawaii 10 years prior.
And we never ended up selling our home there because we had various friends rent it over the years. And we kept saying if we ever can’t find a renter, we’re gonna sell it. And it just didn’t happen. And fortunately, a month before I got sick, our renters moved out and so our house was sitting vacant and they moved out early unexpectedly.
They let us know a month ahead, but we weren’t expecting it. And so we didn’t have a new tenant, so . We ended up moving back into that house and it just worked out perfectly. So we were in Seattle for my surgeries and they let me choose, which is really another thing I tell people, like when someone’s in a situation where their life has exploded.
Giving them options really is so powerful. It’s like, let them have some choices. It’s especially like my family swooped in, they took over everything, all of my household. They were paying the bills, they were doing everything. My daughter set up our entire house in Seattle. She ended up ha she [00:50:00] threw friends and, and renting some of, hospital equipment and stuff.
She got furniture in the entire house and we’re in our fifties at this point. All our friends have an extra chair or couch or bed. Some, between the people that were following my story, I got home and my house was, it looked exactly like when we left it, it was a slightly different table, but it was in the exact same spot. The carpets were off the floor. We didn’t need that cuz I was gonna, I was in a wheelchair, but it was incredible how our friends just swooped in and did everything for us. And she got that all set up. So they gave the choice they gave me. That was really meaningful. They gave me the choice of moving back to Seattle, although by the time I said yes, they already had a wheelchair ramp set up and everything, so they had already decided this.
But they let me feel like it was my choice and they said, we could go back to Kauai. Well, Kauai is the smallest of the main islands. The hospital’s really small. I can’t imagine there’s a prosthetist here. Although there might be, probably what there is there’s probably someone who comes from Oahu once a month to see their 20 patients on Kauai.
If that, so we moved to [00:51:00] Seattle. , I just decided, I’m like, for prosthetics and for hospital care, I just wanna move to Seattle. The hospital here was amazing. I’m doing a lot of stuff with them now. I’ve gotten to meet my doctors and I got to give a keynote speech for a, an award ceremony that they just had, and it was the coolest thing I’ve ever done.
It was so neat to be able to honor them and what they did for me. But I did leave them for the surgery so that I could really have a lot of resources to choose from for how I got cared for afterward. And I envisioned potentially moving to New York because of a prosthetist. I was like, okay, we don’t, the world is our oyster now.
Where will we go? But Seattle had great options. I’ve been really happy with everything. And then they also let me choose what, which surgery I had first, and they said, we can do ’em together. And I just said, absolutely not. I can’t. I can’t lose that much of myself at one time. To me, I was still very attached, and so I chose my feet because they were they, there was some potential of infection with them. They still had wounds on them and they were, I don’t know what the, I don’t know how to describe it, but it was a little different. But my feet were just very damaged. I [00:52:00] decided feet first and then waited a month and did my hands, and glad I did it that way. And like I say, as much as anything, just the power of me getting to choose that, it just made me so much braver and willing to go into it and just felt like I wasn’t completely out of control in my life.
Carling: Wow, your story’s incredible.
Katy: Yeah, it’s been crazy. But I, like I say, I mean it just, gosh, I’d be silly if I didn’t admit it was the answer to my prayer. Not absolutely. I would not have signed up for it, in a million years. And I, I don’t know that I could a hundred percent say I would, if my, if a fairy came in front of me and said, I’ll take it all away from you, I think I’m getting to the point where I’d say, no you can’t, cuz I have work to do.
It’s this is my purpose now and I need more people to know I need this not to happen to somebody else.
it’s,
Carling: wow. Where’s the best place for people to find you and your story
and
Katy: Woo. You know?
So I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. I, it turns out I, I heard that, I don’t know what you guys are doing up in Canada, but I heard that [00:53:00] Montana the governor there just outlawed TikTok. And as of I think January one, it’s gonna be illegal to use TikTok in Montana.
Yeah, crazy. And the United States is really having a thing against TikTok but anyways, I am on TikTok. Anyways, love my audience there.
I’ve just been growing my audience on Facebook and Instagram as well, so I’m really, I’m getting positioned to move over there if I need to. I’m Katie, sepsis amputee, all one word.
I go by Katie Grainger. It’s k a t y and then Granger is G r a i n g e r.
Carling: Ugh. You’re just a wealth of knowledge. I can’t wait to read
your book.
Katy: I could talk for hours to give you all my tips I’ve learned. So yeah. That’s why I’m writing a
book.
Carling: well, once the book is out, you’ll have to let me know and I’ll have you
Katy: I
will, I’ll send you one for sure.
Carling: Yes. Oh my God, I would love that. Awesome. Well, Katie, thank you so much.
Katy: Thank you so much. This was such a great way to start the day. You got me off on the, there’s, by the way, there’s a million expressions, but you got me off on the right foot. I told someone yesterday I needed to get [00:54:00] home and put my feet up
Carling: Gotta have a sense of humor about it.
Katy: Yeah. absolutely. Absolutely.
Carling: All right, well, I will let you enjoy your day. Thank you so
Katy: All right. Thank you carling. I appreciate it. Mm-hmm. you’re doing a great job. You’re so great. I loved it when you reached out to me.
Thank
you.
Carling: you.
Katy: All right, you
Carling: Okay. Have a great day.
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I Did Not Sign Up For This- Podcast 