'Sepsis is one of those times where the antibiotics might not work … sometimes it's just too far gone by the time they get there, and you can't turn things around'

Do a search on sepsis + Edmonton on social media, and you’ll hit a wall of personal anecdotes about near-death — or fatal — cases.

An infection, a virus, flu, COVID. Bacteria, fungus, parasites — any one of them can turn into a nightmare overnight when the body’s life-threatening response to an infection is trying to kill a fly with a sledgehammer.

The infection clock is ticking loudly. The unsuspecting host doesn’t have long. The guidelines say an hour.

The syndrome sends organs into failure, one after the other — or all at once.

“Your body’s system, in an attempt to fight that infection, overactivates the immune system and the clotting system, and so you start to form little blood clots in your blood vessels, or bigger blood clots that your limbs start to look like they’re not getting enough blood flow, and organs shut down. And imagine that happening in every organ in your body,” said Dr. Alison Fox-Robichaud, director of Sepsis Canada.

“It is a spectrum from, ‘I need oxygen when I come into the hospital, I may need some blood pressure support medication,’ to ‘I am deathly ill and the critical care team is trying to do everything they possibly can to keep me alive.’”

Old, young — sepsis doesn’t care.

In a landmark 2025 case, the Alberta Court of King’s Bench awarded one of the largest medical malpractice damages in Canadian history — $17 million — to a Grande Prairie teen and her care providers after her case of sepsis as an infant left her a quadruple amputee.

The court found despite hospitalization, her condition worsened, and a bacterial infection revealed by blood cultures was left untreated.

Raging sepsis led to catastrophic limb ischemia — as it often does.

Surgeons at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton saved the tot’s life with a quadruple amputation.

Postmedia has repeatedly reported on notoriously long waits in Alberta emergency rooms. Bottlenecks block the critical first watershed step — taking vitals and entering them into the patient’s record, said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Alberta Hospital.

“That’s probably the weakest point in any health care system, which is the getting in to be seen and assessed. It’s the hours leading to that time that become very important, whether or not people have come in for care, if they’ve been seen in a timely way, and if the triage of the problem actually caught the signs of sepsis or not,” Saxinger said.

Once vital signs are entered into the electronic record, red flags prompts an alert on the computer system to pop up, saying, “Consider sepsis in this patient, just based on the information that’s been entered, that could be sepsis.”

With Alberta’s much-reported emergency department delays, “time to antibiotics” is a thing.

Dr. Brian Wirzba, president of the Alberta Medical Association and an Edmonton internal medicine physician, said the focus is on how quickly ER docs get to patients.

“That’s sort of where the focus is,” Wirzba said.

“Many of the studies talk about trying to get patients onto the appropriate antibiotics within one to 2.5 hours, and if you’re waiting eight hours in an emergency room, and who knows how long you waited at home before you get there, you know, you could very well potentially be presenting late. So, yeah, the waits in the emergency room are quite concerning,” Wirzba said.

Additionally, delayed diagnosis leads to delayed treatment, prolonging recovery and hospital stays and compounding issues hospitals face.

Saxinger said more than 50 per cent of fatal hospitalizations are due to sepsis.

“Sometimes they’re not able to be stabilized through the event. Quite frequently those cases end up with pretty severe consequences long-term. Sepsis is one of those times where the antibiotics might not work. Sometimes it’s just too far gone by the time they get there, and you can’t turn things around,” she said.

Three years ago, 21-year-old Amalie Henze of Brantford, Ont., was preparing for college, despite chronic Crohn’s disease.

In October 2023, abnormal symptoms laid a sudden, disastrous trail. Bladder pain. Fever. Pain levels off the charts. Dizziness. Disorientation.

Henze woke up a month later from a medically induced coma to horrible news — a perforated small intestine led to septic shock.

Quadruple amputation saved her.

Now she has prosthetic legs, a bionic hand, and another planned for her left arm.

That didn’t keep her from creating Amalie’s Guide to Sepsis, covering symptoms and common misconceptions.

It carries a warning.

“Anyone from infancy to their teens to adulthood can contract an infection that unfortunately goes sideways. Anyone is susceptible — and awareness saves time. And when it comes to sepsis, time can save a life.

“If I had known prior to going into the hospital what sepsis was, I think that would have potentially saved my limbs. If I was able to link (symptoms) to sepsis, then maybe things would have been different,” Henze said.

Make no mistake — sepsis is a medical emergency, and it has long-term implications.

“Death and limb loss are the worst, but people are often left with long-term disabilities, cognitive impairment, muscle weakness, can’t return to work, and often left out of supports of the health care system,” Fox-Robichaud said.

How to stave off sepsis?

“Prevention is everything. If we have an infection that can be prevented or the severity of illness reduced by a vaccine, that is the first preventative strategy.”

At the peak of the pandemic in her ICU, most beds were filled with COVID patients with sepsis.

Once the vaccine came out, the numbers plummeted.

Look after skin wounds, keep them clean. Those who are immunosuppressed by steroid medication or biologics for chronic diseases or with cancer are at increased risk.

The biggest thing is to ask.

If you’re seeing the symptoms in yourself or a loved one awaiting admission — not their usual self, not making sense, a steady cough, a sense of impending doom, if they haven’t passed urine all day, if their skin is mottled — ask a medical caregiver the big question.

“Could this be sepsis?”

“That may trigger that health care professional to say, ‘OK, well, let’s do some blood work. Let’s send off some blood cultures. Let’s look to see if your organs are not working properly, most of which we can do with blood tests,’” Fox-Robichaud said.

Globally, some 166 million people are impacted by sepsis each year, and 21 million die.

Globally, about 12.5 percent of deaths due to sepsis are due to antibiotic resistance.

In Canada, 20 per cent of people who get sepsis die. For patients who require massive support in an intensive care unit, that death rate increases to 35 per cent.

The lucky 80 per cent who survive a hospital stay for sepsis face a five-year mortality rate. With diabetes, the risk for cardiovascular disease post-sepsis goes up to 40 per cent over five years.

Sepsis is the fourth leading cause of death in Canada.

-With files from Cindy Tran

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