Gerrard Kaonga
A woman in Wales has spoken out after she had a deadly infection that left her bedridden and unresponsive while she thought she just had the flu.
As the winter months get colder and flu season gets into full gear, many people become more wary of their health and the annoyances of getting ill.
However, one woman from Carmarthenshire in South West Wales, UK, almost made the fatal mistake of thinking what she was suffering through were just flu symptoms.
27-year-old Roberta Alisauskaite has said she began to feel unwell in October of this year and believed she had just picked up a bad cold from work but the situation would soon become much more dire.
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While Alisauskaite had cold-like symptoms, she claims she also suffered an abscess in one of her wisdom teeth and was taking antibiotics to help the swelling.
But the mother-of-two’s health began to quickly deteriorate over the next few days as she began to cough and shake all while her temperature skyrocketed.
Instead of a cold or flu, what she was suffering from was sepsis, something that was only revealed after having multiple tests done at hospital and speaking with a consultant.
She was taken to hospital after being found in bed by her two young children, unresponsive and slurring her speech, an incident she says has traumatized them.
Speaking in a heartbreaking video, the mother said, ‘it is so bad, I can barely catch a breath’ before then proceeding to cough very hard into her pillow.
Following the incident, Alisauskaite hopes to raise awareness of the symptoms she experienced that she had mistaken for simple flu.
She said: "I was originally under the weather and it felt like cold-like flu symptoms.
"On Monday, I woke up and I was really flushed and I was so hot, my whole face was covered in sweat and I wasn't wearing anything other than a t-shirt.
"I was really cold and I put the heating on. My body then went into what I now was septic shock.
"I was wrapped up in bed with the heating on but I was shaking. It made me go a bit delirious.
"I stripped myself off and went in a cold shower to cool off as I felt like I was burning.
"[When my neighbor dropped my kids off], I told them I was going to lie down upstairs and told my kids to come and chill on the bed with me.
"I tried to speak to my kids but I wasn't making any sense anymore and it was a really scary moment.”
Sepsis is a medical emergency and knowing the signs and acting fast can save lives. There is no single sign of sepsis but spotting symptoms in adults can show as slurred speech, extreme shivering, breathlessness, muscle pain and confusion.