It’s funny, I have wanted to write about this woman for some time now and in the in between of life and blogging, I just haven’t gotten around to it. But the universe will always provide and this is a very fitting questions for a story about a woman who changed my world, even for a brief moment.

In very last March 2021, I was exceptionally sick. I had gone into hospital via ambulance the night before and somehow I had slipped through the cracks and ended up not being seen for over six hours. By the time nurses and doctors realised or remembered I was there, I was very deep into septic shock. I was so sickI bare even knew what was going on around me. It was also during a snap COVID lock down so I had no support around me once the paramedic left.

Eventually, at about 1am after going into hospital eight hours prior, they finally begun some form of treatment, realised what was going on and immediately transferred me to accuse care where the nurses where incredible and probably saved my life that day. This particular hospital has since had multitude of issues in their ER department, I would not recommend. But anyway. The next morning my specialist became aware I was admitted and by probably 9am he had me begun transfer to my regular hospital, the private hospital across the road. But if you’ve had sepsis or kidney infections, guys, you know it gets worse before it gets better,

So how they treat what was going on inside me is with two antibiotics, once called Keflex. An antibiotic specific to kidney infections and for a pharmaceutical drug, this ones actually quite kind on the body. Minimal side effects, slight nausea, bad taste in your mouth for half an hour or so but overall not to shabby. Well done whoever figured this one out.

The big baddie in this story is an antibiotic called Gentamicin.

This is not a drug one should take lightly. If the doctors are walking in prescribing IV Gentamicin, you’re at serious risk of death or they’re way to trigger happy and I would suggest asking some big ass questions if it does not align with actual life and death.

This is the drug they give chemotherapy patients who have a bacteria infection. The one they give when you are septic and I have known my doctors for a long time, over a decade for some of them and I can tell you, this drug is a last resort. No doctor in their right mind walks into a 28 year olds hospital room and wants to prescribe this drug. I have had it I believe three times and when my specialist said I needed to stay on it for a few days, I don’t even know, a part of me wanted to keel over and die right then and there. The shit sucks eggs.

Now, I have had 14 surgeries, I have been admitted into hospital hundreds of times, I have had more kidney infections then I could even begin to recite. I am well versed in medical intervention.

But gentamicin, that shit burns your insides. The injection itself (and again, I have had more IV injections than you’ll ever begin to comprehend) feels like someone is injecting fire into your vein. It, burns. It’s one of only two IV treatments I have felt travel through my blood stream and after three of them, I broke mentally. What follows the burning, throughout your ENTIRE body, is extreme nausea. The desire to power chuck everything you’ve eaten in your entire life is strong. The vein itself does very quickly begin to weaken and after two days of injections in this IV site, hind site states the following injection should have been done in a new site.

So when you have these types of antibiotics, we then move onto treating the side effects. In this case, it was just the utter nausea. I couldn’t eat, drink, speak because every time I thought of opening my mouth I just wanted to hurl. So logically the nurse decided to give me an anti nausea injection.

By this stage I think I had been in hospital, alone, remember guys COVID lock down, for two days. I was just mentally exhausted, physically fighting for my life and emotionally.. Imagine being told at 28 years old after 11 surgeries and countless hospital admissions that the organ you’d been trying to save was now the cause of your demise and it needed to be removed – just marinate on being 28 and processing this for a hot second. I was done, just done.

So the nurse comes in with the anti nausea injection and at first I really didn’t think much of it. I surrendered my arm and my IV site and went about watching whatever mind numbing Netflix show I had on to aid me in the disassociation of my reality. And oh, my god. I don’t know why but that injection was like someone was putting fire needles in my arm. I actually think on reflection, the IV had formed a small clot and she had to push it through to use and my fight or flight state was obviously extremely heightened. But fuck, I just lost it, I lost all ounce of bravery and strength I had left, all of it just came crashing down into a pit of considering letting myself die this time and giving up. This sounds dramatic, I have landed in this state twice in my life in hospital and the emotional pit is real. It’s real and it is dark.

This nurse, she was young herself and she was so lovely, her patience and compassion in this moment is something I will always remember, but the cleaner. The cleaner is the hero of my kidney failure.

I was actually hysterical. I had hit begging the nurse to stop and just leave me alone to die in my nausea, fevers and pain, she obviously wasn’t going to do that but I really was just curled up in a ball on the bed bawling my eyes out begging her to stop. I remember her face and I remember the heart break she felt as she pushed through watching me fall to pieces to save my life.

The cleaner for the ward was walking past my room at the time, I looked out the door and I saw her stop and turn her head to look at me and her face dropped.

I don’t know her name, all I know is she was a slender woman with brown hair. She put everything down, dropped her whole life and ran into the room. She sat down next to me and she grabbed my hand and she looked at me and said “It’s going to be okay love, I’ve got you” and I remember just looking at her face and I don’t know what I said to her, but that woman caught me that day. I was falling so fast into giving up, so quickly throwing in the battle and loosing the war and a stranger who’s name I don’t know, who didn’t know me from anything other than a young woman hysterically begging a nurse to stop dropped everything and came into to provide comfort and support when no one else could.

People ask me all the time why I have so much compassion – This woman is the reason why. She still to this day inspires patience and understanding to others when they’re struggling because she knew nothing of my story, she just saw a fellow human being going through something traumatic and she stopped everything to reach out.

The cleaner saved my life that day.

Don’t get me wrong, the doctors and nurses played a huge role in treatment and quick thinking to keep me alive. But my will to fight was diminished. Back at home I had a dog with stage five leukaemia and a very rocky relationship and I saw no reason to keep fighting. And for a moment, this strange gave me a reason.

She lives in my mind, every single day. I saw purity, kindness, a desire to connect and help in this woman’s eyes and she got me through one of the heaviest mental hurdles I have ever been through. It took her maybe 4-5 minutes, but she is the reason I got back up again.

I don’t know if she remembers me. I know the nurse does because I have seen her since when I was recovering from having my kidney removed six weeks later. The nurse came into my room the next day in tears and she told me she couldn’t sleep after the whole ordeal, in all fairness, neither could I. But she showed me compassion and love even after I had lost my mind into a hysterical pit of grief.

We need people. Humans are not designed to go through life alone. I really hope even one person reads this and the next time you see someone hurting, you stop and take a moment to hold their hand and maybe spend less than five minutes saving someone’s life with compassion.

If you’re out there, cleaner who saved my life. Thank you. My life is so beautiful now and you are a catalyst reason for it. I will remember you forever.

I am going to go and cry into my coffee now, maybe this is reason I hadn’t shared this part of my own story.. The heaviness still follows me to this day and its not something I can discuss without crying, a lot.

Thank you for reading.

Sarah x