Former Air Force master sergeant deals with loss of independence

LYNN HAVEN — Bernadine “Bernie” Reams woke up one night in October 2011 with a sore throat. She ate lozenges and inhaled Chloraseptic spray until, doctors told her later, she overdosed.

No one goes to the emergency room for a sore throat, she told herself, but this was some kind of sore throat. She couldn’t even swallow water.

At 4 a.m., the former Air Force master sergeant woke her husband, Rob, and asked him to take her the ER; if he wouldn’t she would call an ambulance. Before she went to the hospital she fixed her hair; she had no idea she wouldn’t return home for more than three months or what her life would be when she got home.

The first thing they did at the hospital was check her blood pressure. The results of the first two tests were so far from healthy the doctors and nurses thought the machine was broken and retested her without it. Her blood pressure had dropped between each test. Reams was dying — quickly.

“You’re a very sick woman, and I’m going to put this IV in your throat,” she recalled someone saying.

Once the IV was in, Reams was out. She wouldn’t learn her diagnosis for nearly a month.

“That was it. I don’t remember anything after that. Twenty-seven days later I woke up after a coma. Twenty-seven days later. My fingers were black. My toes were black. I had a ventilator breathing for me, and I couldn’t talk.”

Nearly three years later her shoes are 2½ sizes smaller than they were that October night, and they’re wildly more expensive. She wears a fentanyl patch and takes narcotic painkillers, as well as dozens of other meds and treatments on a regular basis.

She had survived sepsis, a condition where toxins in the blood attack tissue and the vital organs. Sometimes it’s described as blood poisoning. It’s extremely serious and one of, if not the most, expensive reasons for hospitalization.

Sepsis shut down her organs and caused tissue death in her digits. All of her toes were amputated, as were most of her fingers above the knuckle. She had to relearn how to walk.

Her lungs don’t absorb oxygen like they should, so she has less energy. She shuffles around her house in puffy pink socks trying not to stub her feet and breathing oxygen pumped through 50 feet of tube that leashes her to the machine in the dining room like a dog chained to a tree.

The damage from the sepsis, which was brought on by a urinary tract infection she didn’t know she had, will be permanent.

Fortunately, she has not just one, but four health insurance carriers, so she doesn’t have to pay out of pocket for the $5,000 to $6,000 her treatments cost each month, assuming it’s been a good month and she hasn’t required a visit to the emergency room.

Actually, by the time she got to the hospital, she was in septic shock, the most severe stage of sepsis. Sepsis kills 28 to 50 percent of people who get it, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Coping

The Air Force gave Reams an American flag that flew over the capitol in Tallahassee when she retired as a master sergeant after more than 20 years. Her husband also is a retired airman, and three of their children have followed the couple’s footsteps into the Air Force as well, just as Reams and her sister had followed their father.

In the Air Force, Reams had top secret security clearances and was for a time involved in monitoring Air Force One, she said. She also holds a degree in education.

But her neurological function has been diminished. She’s quicker to anger than she used to be.

Early in her rehab she took an IQ test and scored 75, which is the threshold for mental disability. Reams doesn’t believe the score; she said the test administrator moved through the test too quickly, so she grew frustrated and stopped trying.

More than a million Americans get sepsis each year, according to the CDC, killing more than a quarter-million of them, including thousands of children, according to Sepsis Alliance. It’s the most common cause of death for people with cancer and AIDS, and a study released last month suggests sepsis is responsible for up to half of all hospital deaths.

But in 2013, a Sepsis Alliance/Harris Interactive poll found fewer than half of Americans had even heard the word sepsis. Reams wants to change that.

“We don’t hear about it,” she said. “We need to hear about it, because I lost my independence.”

Her husband is writing a book on their experience, and she has approached strangers to ask if they know what sepsis is. She’s got Sepsis Alliance materials at the ready, including donation envelopes, and she’s planning a trip to New York in the fall to attend the Sepsis Alliance annual ceremony honoring Sepsis Heroes.