Ohio mother loses all 4 limbs after flu led to bacterial infection

POLAND, Ohio (WKRC) – An Ohio mother lost all four of her limbs after her flu led to a bacterial infection.

According to People Magazine, 38-year-old Kristen Fox, a mother of two, fell ill with the flu in March of 2020. The illness came only days before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill.

Per the publication, Fox went to urgent care and was diagnosed with the flu. She was given a flu medication and sent home, but according to People, her symptoms worsened.

“I was on my couch and my best friend texts me. She’s like, ‘How do you feel? And I had texted her back. I said, ‘I feel like I’m dying,’ and that was the last text she got from me,” Fox, now 42 years old, told People in an exclusive interview.

Per the publication, Fox spoke with a friend, a nurse, who stopped by to check her vitals and informed her she needed to go to the hospital. Within 24 hours of her arrival at the hospital to see a doctor, Fox found herself in the emergency room, according to People.

“I went back to triage, and I don’t remember anything after that,” Fox told the publication.

Fox’s condition rapidly declined, and she went into septic shock, according to People. Per the Cleveland Clinic, septic shock “is the last and most severe stage of sepsis. Sepsis occurs when your immune system has an extreme reaction to an infection.”

“They put me in a medically-induced coma. I was already turning purple,” Fox recalled to the publication. “They said to prepare for some limb loss because they had me on so many vapo-pressors.”

According to the National Institute of Health, the use of vapo-pressors is sometimes essential to keep a patient alive, however “upper and lower extremity limb ischemia (a lack of blood flow to the heart) can markedly compromise a patient’s future functional status and quality of life.”

Fox’s legs were amputated below the knee on March 27, according to People, and after the condition of her arms worsened, they were amputated below the elbows on April 6.

Fox told the publication that she awoke in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was left shocked with how different the world had become.

“There’s nothing that’s gonna change this. I’m never going to get my arms and legs back. So it was fight or flight, instantly. That has been the ultimate thing that has carried me through this — I realized from the first moment that it happened, my life is forever changed,” Fox explained to People.

With her children in mind, Fox conquered twelve weeks of physical therapy, working for three hours a day at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Rehabilitation Institute.

“They could have mourned my death. They didn’t. I have to go and fight and kick ass in this therapy every single day to be the mom they need me to be,” Fox told the publication.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 1.7 million adults develop sepsis in the United States, and nearly 350,000 die during their hospitalization or are discharged to hospice each year.