My Mom (75) has UTI and now sepsis, can this be fatal?

I am not a nurse so I am not qualified to give any médical advice. UTIs can be quite serious for the elderly especially those who have other médical conditions. My understanding is that to treat sepsis, multiple antibiotics are given to try to deal with the infection. It is very serious. I understand it can be damaging to other organs in the body. If you have a médical POA, the doctors, and nurses MUST answer YOUR questions.

Please, please get some more opinions before its to late!!! My dad was a strong man, cutting down trees a month before he got sick!! It started with a UTI!!! We even brought him to the hospital after he couldn't urinate, what did the emergency room do but put a catheter in him, never checked his blood or nothing like that!! My dad passed away February 12, 2018, I buried my dad February 14 on Valentine's Day. He was my best friend!! When no one cares and these older people respect the doctors and nurses and trust them they die!! Instead stand up and say we want to try anything please!!! They work for us, remember. Now my dads house has to go through probate but in the mean time it got broken into!! Please my dad was 73 funny, great sense of humor, and healthy. He was built like a thirty year old. Help your mom!!

Denverfan
Your comment was the first I seen, your headline caught my eye as similar to my mum ,thankyou for commenting on the forum, you have helped more than you'll ever know..x

Thankyou to all the posters,for your caring and honest comments,you have helped me to understand my feelings,and to know myself and my sibblings are doing the best we can,our mum has been taken into hospital today,she has Sepsis and possible water infection,she has Alzheimer's,and Cellulitis in her legs,she's 76 years old,I was googling sepsis and came across this forum,I joined and I'm so glad I did,so thank you all again,I'm so appreciative of all of you..xx

Sepsis can occur at any age and may or may not be fatal. the important thing is for the bugs to be identified and the proper antibiotics given, the sooner the better. this can be done by culturing both blood samples, and if known, the source of the infection. It does take a few days for cultures to grow so a broad spectrum antibiotic should be started immediately and once the results of the cultures are known a change can be made if necessary. Septicemia usually results in hospitalization at least till the acute stage is over then IV antibiotics can be continued at home or in a rehab facility. An IV line is left in place and a family member can be taught how to administer the drug or a public health nurse can come in daily to do it. It is not difficult but you need to be instructed properly. You just hve to connect a small bag of antibiotic to the IV which takes about 15 minutes to run in. There is some flushing of the line that has to be done in the right order but you don't have to inject the patient or anything. This is usually done for about 5-6 weeks and may or may not be followed by oral antibiotics.
Sepsis does take a heavy toll on the patient and the older they are the longer it takes to fully recover. Months or weeks is not unusual.

You don't have to be elderly for sepsis to invade your blood stream,

my dad had sepsis twice he was 90 at the time. the first time was really bad the second time we caught it in time because I knew what to look for. it is very dangerous for an elderly person to have it. you really need to keep a good eye out for an UTI all the time. that is what starts it most of the time. if you catch it at the beginning they can get rid of it but once the infection goes thru out there blood stream its very dangerous. first time dad had it he was in hospital for weeks the second was about four or five days.. I know it sounds gross but keep an eye on their pee color, smell. thickness. that's how you can catch it quickly.... good luck

Pearl2902: That's terrible!

My mom was missed diagnosed with a UTI, it was finally diagnosed as bladder cancer
after I took her to another doctor. My advice get a second opinion.

Septic shock damages organs, your lungs fill with fluid in extreme cases
there is no recovery the doctors kept my mother alive for two weeks on a respirator, with false hope and a lot of procedures to make money

Please don't question your care giving of your mom. We all seem to do that and it doesn't help us mentally at all. you are a wonderful person for taking on a situation like the rest of us that has so many ups and downs. after a while you don't know which way your going any more. my dad went thru it all as your mom. he did have the UTI first than sepsis. high temperature, chills, totally out of it, his body swelled up like king kong. the hospital told me dad wasn't going to make it thru the night. He also stated seniors get ITUs often and I need to keep an eye on the oncoming signs in order to catch it right away. I was one of the lucky ones as my dad did make it , thank god. he was in the hospital for two months and rehab for couple months also. dad has had sepsis two times total. he was lucky both times. god works in funny ways. We all can just do the best than we can and be proud of our selves for being there for the ones we love and surviving thru it ourselves.....

Like magnoliabulkhed (poster) my mom passed away and she was also 76 & was a resident of a nursing home. Unlike magnoliabulkhed my mom never had a UTI.
Question everything they do and all medication she receives

Loeloveumom, you did not fail at caring for Mom. Sepsis happens very fast and the weakness and nausea were probably as you guessed due to the chemo and radiation. In her weakened state she contacted a UTI which may or may not have caused the sepsis.
Once sepsis takes over the survival rate is very low.
You followed your instincts and got her the help she needed. Unfortunately in her weakened state she was not able to survive.
Even if you had been there 24/7 you may not have recognized the UTI. It could have been a long standing infection and she was used to it. Try not to second guess yourself you did the best you could. Grieve the loss of your mom but don't blame yourself

So sorry about your mom loveloveumom. I know you tried your best but there are so many things we can't control especially if our loved ones never tell us. I am certain you took great care of your mother.

I wish you and your family peace.

My mom, 82, had just gone in to remission from lung cancer and completed about 10 rounds of follow up radiation to prevent the cancer from coming back. She was living independently but I was checking in on her just about every day. She had been experiencing nausea and weakness and some confusion but we attributed that to the chemo and radiation treatments. One night I just had a bad feeling so I went to check on her. I found her on the floor. We got her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a UTI. She never recovered. I had no idea she was that sick. Looking back, I wish I had gotten her to the doctor sooner, and she maybe she would still be with us. But she had been to two doctors that week and neither of them mentioned UTI or sepsis. I am heartbroken.

I meant zytrhr.

zyhrtr: Thank you!

That is so true about a motivating factor... as I said above my mom survived septic shock and being on a ventilator, she has copd, 4th stage renal failure and has now beat ESLB. She's nearly 80 but she says she wants to live to see my son's children. He's only 16 so I tell her she better live to be 100!

I went through this with my dad. He was in ICU for 11 days and finally starting getting better. He was on (3) different IV antibiotics. They can get better, but it's very serious and can be deadly. The doctor in the ER told me he would have probably died the day he got to the hospital if he had waited longer before going.

Denverfan - something struck me in your posts regarding your mom (in addition to the uti/sepsis thread), she has had big time recent loss with her sister dying, right?
A lot of focus has been on her health & getting the sepsis cleared and very much medical but I'd bet she is feeling quite quite lost emotionally. Her hubs had died and now her sister and although she has you, she may feel overwhelmed at the prospect of getting better to live & for what…….she's in her early 70's, right? well she's looking around the rehab/NH and everybody looks old and it's kinda depressing (like there's 90+ yr old there so it s like ghosts of her mom & aunts...) & the whole "why should I get better to be here" sets in. She may need someone to motivate her to get better for the future and someone besides you. Are there sibling or a favorite grandkid or dear friend who can also come to see her and have it so she has a reason to get to tomorrow? Even with the best health care, they need to themselves get an internal reason to get over the disease and move ahead. My MIL had sepsis and she was pretty dour & difficult to begin with and never found a positive reason to try to rally. My mom - although never having sepsis but several TIA's & a shattered hip w/her last 18 mos bedfast on hospice at NH - would get motivated by anything her beloved grandson asked her to do; not for me but for him. Try to find a reason to get her to motivate herself besides you.

If her sister was her daily touch-point, having her gone has been huge change.

Good article on Sepsis in the NYTimes Science section today.

Denver fan- she recovered to nearly the same condition previous to septic shock. Never had trouble even eating.

Hi Denverfan,
I wish you the best of luck with your mom. My mother who is 91 was also hospitalized with very low BP, fever and general weakness. In the ER, they discovered the bladder infection and were doing a lot to support her BP. They were careful about giving too much IV fluid because my mother also has heart failure.
To make a very long story short, my mother seems to have recovered quickly. She is eating, talking, and feeling much better. It took her about 6 weeks to recover. Her appetite has improved as well. She is eating normal foods that are pureed. My only advice for you is to keep an eye on her yourself. The nursing home staff should be able to keep track of how much she is eating and should be able to offer additional nutritional support. You may help them if you can tell them which foods she prefers. My mother loves mashed bananas. I also bring her some dessert like banana cream pie. My mom is also diabetic but I don't worry about that right now. I just want to make sure she is eating.

Johnsgirl, thanks for your post. Did your mom improve at all after the first infection? Since leaving the hospital after sepsis my mom is now in a skilled nursing facility for at least 2 weeks for rehab. She no longer has the infection (still on antibiotics) but she has declined so much since this all happened. She is much more confused than before, can hardly even understand what I'm saying to her, can't stand by herself and can't walk. She is finally eating (pureed foods) but very little. Before this happened, she walked on her own w/ a walker, fed herself and had some dementia confusion but could carry on a short conversation. The facility she's in now is doing a good job and also giving her Boost shakes to help strengthen her but she seems to be declining. I think the Sepsis was just too much for her to take at this stage.

My mom is 78 and septic shock led to going to rehab, but did enough damage to where I can't care for her at home anymore. She was getting more and more UTIs in last 18 months after getting the first one she was aware of even having. I have suffered since a baby with them so when she described her symptoms I took her to the doctor, got it cleared up and added cranberry supplements to her regiment etc. Since being hospitalized for septic shock (but in consideration her kidney function was already reduced to 36% going into it) she has had one UTI after the other in last 90 days. It's not the same bacteria either as the nursing home has run several cultures and has had to switch from broad spectrum antibiotics to something that will treat that particular infection. The baffling part to me, since as I said I've dealt with these my whole life, is how different and severe the symptoms of UTIs are on elderly. Confusion, word slurring, muscle weakness, etc. Her muscle weakness even makes swallowing difficult which of course leads to dehydration. Explaining to her what's going on is a UTI after she raised me and they looked nothing like this, has been quite the challenge!

Llamalover74

You're so right.

zytrhr: Yes, I know that like I said a person who gets sepsis, Boom-deceased!

SusanA43

You're welcome. That's a shame. Maybe you can take comfort that he is not in pain anymore and is at peace.

Thanks, zythr. His last months were not easy at all. He fell at home in August and was gone by January - having never come back home.

SusanA43

I'm so sorry, Your dad really suffered. Hospitals and NH/AL's don't want to take the chance of being sued, so they do take steps to protect themselves.