An emergency medical services worker has opened up about her close brush with death after dismissing warning signs of a serious infection for nearly a fortnight.
Ivy Melanson took to TikTok to share how she developed severe sepsis from a C. diff infection, admitting she convinced herself she was overreacting.
"I almost died last year from severe sepsis, and I ignored all my symptoms and told myself I was being dramatic for two weeks, almost, before I almost died," she told her viewers.
The healthcare professional revealed that living with multiple chronic conditions made her reluctant to seek medical attention.
| TIKTOK / IVY MELANSON
"I have tons of chronic illnesses and didn't want to go to the hospital. And it almost cost me my life," she said.
Her ordeal began after undergoing oral surgery, which went smoothly but required a three-week course of antibiotics due to the intensity of the procedure.
Once she finished the medication, things took a worrying turn.
"When I get off the antibiotics, I start having really bad diarrhoea and I also start getting nauseous, I couldn't really eat," she recalled.
One symptom stood out in particular – an unusual odour she'd never encountered before.
"The thing about this is it had a very particular smell, but I had never smelt this smell before, so I didn't know what it was," she said.
As days passed, Ivy found herself constantly rushing to the bathroom while growing increasingly weak.
Working in EMS, she initially assumed she'd caught the flu from a patient, relying on energy drinks to combat her exhaustion. The second week brought a dramatic deterioration in her health.
"I started feeling like death, god-awful sick, but I still had work," she said, describing how her eyes began burning, getting out of bed became a struggle, and she would shake upon standing.
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A low-grade fever appeared three days before she became severely septic, and the breaking point came during a night shift when her heart rate soared to 210 beats per minute after lifting a patient from the ground.
"I knew in the back of my head I had sepsis, but I kept telling myself I can't just leave in the middle of the night, who's going to take my place?" she admitted.
Everything was spinning, breathing became difficult, and she felt she wouldn't survive.
At the hospital, her blood pressure had "tanked", she had a "super high fever", and was hallucinating.
"They sais 'hey, you need to call your family, we don't know how you're going to do through the night'," she recalled.
The cause of her severe sepsis remained a mystery until she fell ill again after leaving the hospital – that's when doctors discovered she had C. diff. Antibiotics cleared the infection, but Ivy revealed she's now battling a recurrence.
'I go to the bathroom literally almost 40 times a day'
|GETTY
"I go to the bathroom literally almost 40 times a day. The smell is the same as before. I am weak, I am pale, I am fragile, I don't feel good," she said.
She explained that previous C. diff sufferers are highly susceptible to the infection returning, even months after taking antibiotics.
"I don't want anyone to ever deal with this; it was the [scariest] time of my life; it was a living hell. Don't ignore your symptoms. If I didn't go [to see a doctor], I would have been dead."
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