Last week, Katie Sullivan started showing signs of improvement and let her mother know she wanted to go home, according to ABC7.
A Pittsburgh family says their 18-year-old daughter was “fighting for her life” after she became seriously ill and put in a medically induced coma due to a urinary tract infection that went untreated, according to reports.
Katie Sullivan, a gymnast and a freshman softball player at Waynesburg University, had lower back pain that she thought was from her training schedule.
However, just days after Christmas, she was taken to a hospital in critical condition with extremely low blood pressure and a high heart rate and that is when doctors discovered she had an untreated urinary tract infection, according to WAFB.
Katie’s mother, Shannon, spoke to WAFB and said, “She was a perfectly healthy 18-year-old who was suddenly fighting for her life,” she said. “When they did the testing, they found she had a urinary tract infection for about a month that actually caused a hole in her kidney, which caused an abscess in her liver into her back muscle and behind her kidney. She was in septic shock.”
For the last two weeks, Katie has been in the hospital in a medically induced coma, on a ventilator and had brain swelling. She also had surgery to help stabilize what had happened, according to WAFB.
“We weren’t given much hope. So, we brought all our family in. And hour to hour, we went out and celebrated that she didn’t deteriorate,” Shannon told WAFB.
Last week, Katie started showing signs of improvement and let her mother know she wanted to go home, according to ABC7.
"For the first time today, I asked her if she wanted to go home and she shook her head yes. They asked her if she was in pain, and she shook her head no," Shannon told ABC7.
The teenager’s doctors believe she has a long road of recovery ahead of her after becoming so sick. Even though she was strong and healthy, her illness was critical, according to Yahoo! News.
Her family just wants to spread the word that what may seem like small medical issues shouldn’t be ignored, according to Yahoo! News.
“Even if you think it’s nothing, please get it checked,” Shannon told Yahoo! News. “Because I never in a million years, and I’m a nurse practitioner, did I think I’d be here watching my daughter being intubated, in renal failure, and being given a dire diagnosis at 18.”
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