Teen faced a battle for life after her sore throat led to a blood infection that made her organs ROT

A TEENAGER who thought she was suffering from flu almost died as her organs began to ROT inside her.

Jess Lewin, now 19, was left fighting for her life when a throat infection caused sepsis to spread throughout her body.

She spent four weeks in intensive care and was out into an induced coma after being rushed to hospital with the life-threatening blood infection, which was shutting down her organs.

The drama began on April 4, when the Plymouth teenager felt poorly at work, but thought she just needed to get some rest.

After a few days off – getting worse, not better – her doctor told her to keep her fluids up and take paracetamol.

The office worker explained: “I felt so awful. By the end of the week, I was starting to feel dehydrated, dizzy and I had a lot of sickness and diarrhoea.

“It was getting progressively worse. I posted a status on Facebook asking my friends what they thought, but everyone just told me it was the flu.”

Although Jess’s  temperature, vomiting, aches and pains fitted with that diagnosis, she felt it was something more.

“I can honestly say that, in the week running up to it, it really felt like I was dying,” she said.

“Obviously, you can’t say that to anyone. They would have thought I was just being over dramatic, but I really, really couldn’t get out of bed.”

On April 13, as Jess’s condition deteriorated, mum Tina Spanton took her back to the doctor, who told her she needed to go straight to hospital.

Tina took her straight to Derriford hospital in Plymouth.

After a CT scan, Jess was sedated and given two emergency operations – one to remove her left ovary, because it was so badly infected, and one to insert a tracheostomy – a tube in the neck to help her breathe.

The infection had spread throughout her body, causing serious damage to her lungs, uterus and other ovary.

Luckily, skilled doctors were able to save them.

Sedated for 10 days and placed on a life support machine in intensive care, Jess’ mum and was terrified she’d lose her.

Jess recalled: “I was really lucky that I did get to hospital at that stage. The doctors told my mum a few times that I wasn’t going to make it and she said there were a couple of times when she really thought I was gone.

“She told me that, when I went for my tracheostomy operation, it was only meant to take an hour. Instead it took about three hours and she thought I’d died.”

When Jess woke up on April 23, she had no idea what had happened and, unable to talk because of the tracheostomy, she couldn’t ask anyone how ill she had been.

“When I woke up, I was so scared,” she said. “I thought when I went into hospital that I would be there for one night on a drip or something.

“My mum was there and she explained to me that I had been really ill, but I was doing really well. I just asked, ‘When do I get to go home?’

“The nurse said, ‘It will be weeks, not months.’

“I just thought, ‘What are you on about? I don’t want to be in hospital’.”

The sepsis had spread throughout her body and left her incredibly weak. Just getting out of bed and into a chair was a struggle.

She said: “When I tried to get into a chair, I had to have a nurse and two physiotherapists to help me. It was much harder than I ever thought and I was so weak, I couldn’t get myself back into bed and they had to use a harness.

“I was an 18-year-old girl and not being able to get into bed really freaked me out. It made me feel like a 90-year-old.”

But Jess was determined to get better, especially as there was a new addition to the family who she wanted to meet.

On May 7, just a few weeks after Jess woke up, her sister Ashleigh, 23, gave birth to her little boy Oscar.

Jess continued: “While I was sedated, everyone was telling my sister to hang on.

“Little Oscar was born after I woke up and the hospital staff arranged to wheel me up to maternity, so  I got to see him. That was amazing, because it gave me a reason to fight to get better.”

After seven weeks of intense physio in hospital, Jess was able to go home for three days after her 19th birthday, on May 27.

She still had a long road ahead, as she struggled to climb the stairs and got tired really easily.

Jess continued her therapy at home and returned to her office job at a building supplies company in July.

Sepsis is the primary causes of death from infection, across the world – claiming around 40,000 lives in the UK each year.

For more information on the deadly infection, click here.