September is sepsis awareness month! Why? I don't know! But let's get aware:
Every 20 seconds, someone (in the US) is diagnosed with sepsis. Every two minutes, someone will die of it
What is it? Sepsis has many causes, including a surgery getting some kind of contaminant inside you, a really bad case of pneumonia or some other infection, a bad cut or burn, etc. Basically, when a bacteria, yeast, fungus, etc gets into you, sometimes, for some reason, your body does not react in the normal way and starts attacking your organs as a response. The infection runs rampant, and you'll likely shell out TWICE (2×!!!) the cost of a normal hospital stay while they race against the clock to cure you. If you have or know someone who's had sepsis (and likely you do), you know it takes a long time for them to even figure out what specific bacteria, etc, is causing the infection, and you're put on a wide cocktail of drugs in an attempt to kill everything in the meantime, which ALSO wreaks havoc on your body and immune system. It's very hard to quickly diagnose with accuracy without some new and/or expensive and maybe labor intensive tech (although there are up and coming innovations that are working on speeding up the process of identifying and determining susceptibility to drugs!).
Why am I telling you? I'm glad you asked! Just knowing about it is a good thing. Medical issues are always scary, but it's a bit easier if you already know something about what's going on. However, this is one bit of the medical field that could use some loving right now in order to find faster methods to diagnose and treat patients. If you'd like to participate more, like in a local Sepsis Walk or just giving some money to help the problem, visit sepsis .org (no links bc tumblr sucks, sorry, but this one is easy at least. You can also google "sepsis awareness" and this website should pop up immediately). Don't forget to google the issue yourself before spreading facts. I'm not an expert on the topic!
Thanks for reading!
