Everyone can appreciate what you feel like when you get the common cold. Generally, symptoms like a sore throat, bone pain, and muscle aches are present. These are the types of symptoms Sangita, a young 28-year old lady, was experiencing when she presented to the Emergency Department at SMAH. Most patients with these symptoms would be sent home and instructed to follow up.
Thankfully for Sangita, the admitting physician’s intuition prompted him to recommend admission. Surprisingly, for both the patient and doctor, she became very sick, very quickly. Within hours she was transferred to the ICU because her breathing had gotten so severe. Her blood pressure, dangerously low, required medicines to elevate it. The clinical scenario was consistent with two deadly conditions: Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and Sepsis.
For days Sangita struggled to live. It took a multiple disciplinary effort, between anesthesia, otolaryngology (ENT), and medicine to keep her a life. One night, about half way through her 21st day ICU admission, she was extremely sick. Sangita actually remembers what was happening and describes the moment, “I felt like I could see myself and the doctors work on me. I felt my soul leave my body.”
Dr. Molé, hospital CEO and Emergency Medicine Physician, recalls her case, “Sanjita survived only by God’s grace and the valiant efforts of our multidisciplinary team (Internal Medicine, Anesthesia, ENT, and Nursing). She kept trying to die on us many times, but the we would not give up on her!”
Sangita was discharged from the ICU, with a tracheostomy on hospital day 30. Since then her tracheostomy has been removed, she has recovered fully.
It is because of you, donors, who support this hospital in so many generous ways, that Sangita had the resources available to her so that she might live. Thank you!