In mid-February, 43-year-old Jason Vosmund was admitted to Carney Hospital, Nebraska with a high fever and pain in his left leg. Despite examinations and tests, the doctors could not understand what kind of infection struck the man's leg and caused sepsis (blood poisoning).
For three days the patient received strong antibiotics, but they had no effect.
When life threatened, Vosmund was transported to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where his leg was amputated to the knee the very next day. Even after the amputation, Vosmund's condition was so precarious that he had only a 7% chance of survival, according to the surgeons.
For Jason Vosmund, it all started with body aches and chills, and the symptoms were similar to those of the flu. However, the very next day, his temperature rose sharply, and his left leg began to ache unbearably. He also developed a high fever, which made him delirious. Jason's frightened wife called an ambulance for him.
Doctors were unable to identify the type of infection, calling it mysterious, and antibiotics in this case also could not cope. He was diagnosed with sepsis, which quickly covered the body.
Sepsis occurs when the body attacks its own tissue as if it were a foreign body. Moreover, the source of infection can be different from a toxic substance in food to inhalation through the lungs.
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According to one of the preliminary versions, it is possible that pathogenic bacteria remained in Jason's leg after an old wound or scratch, and then something "awakened" them and the man's body reacted to this with unusual force. The resulting infection began to rise very quickly up the leg up to the body.
Sepsis is a very dangerous condition. Chemicals that the immune system throws into the bloodstream to fight infection cause inflammation throughout the body, not just the infected organ.
Doctors divide sepsis into three stages, which progress from common to severe, and from there to septic shock, from which a person can die.
When Jason was brought to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, he found it difficult to breathe, after which he was hooked up to a ventilator. The next day, doctors decided to cut off his leg to stop the spread of the infection.
After the operation, Jason lay in an artificial coma for a week, and then it took him two more days to regain consciousness. And for a long time he did not understand that his leg was cut off, his brain did not give him any signals about it.
After the amputation, Jason slowly recovered from therapy, and at the end of March he was allowed to go home. Recently, however, he had problems with the stump, it began to fester and now he needs a new operation to clean it. After that, he will have to take strong antibiotics for another month to protect himself from a new infection.