My name is Xochitl Amarillas, and I want to share with you the unpleasant and unexpected experience I had in December 2019.

First, I’ll tell you that I’m a television host and I started my career back in 2000. First, I will say that working in television is crazy because you work a lot during important dates, much more than any other month of the year. That’s why feeling tired and having a headache for me was not alarming.

December 24th was my last day working live, since from January 25th to 5th we would be recording programs and I would not work again until Monday, January 6th, 2020.

On December 25th in the morning, I remember how I woke up to go to the bathroom at 3:00 am, and I felt that my stomach was very swollen and I thought “I have eaten too much and this is the consequence. I need to go on a diet. This last month I’ve eaten very badly and I haven’t taken care of myself, and this is the result”.

Anyway, I went back to bed and fell asleep, and I woke up again when my children came happily to my bed saying that Santa had brought them many gifts. I felt very tired! (I thought it was because of all the work I had had during the last few weeks).

We all had breakfast together. I was taking my mom to mass at church at 9:00 am but, while I was driving, I developed a headache. I felt a lot of pressure, so I went home and went to bed. Then, I went back to pick her up at 10:00 am and I still felt very tired, and I noticed my stomach was super swollen. The pressure in my head was intermittent.

At about 12:00 pm, I ate and went back to bed on the couch to watch TV. My children wanted me to play with them, but I felt very bad. I didn’t feel well, I was tired, and my stomach was very swollen. I asked my children to be careful and not to jump on me, because they were playing very close to where I was lying on the couch.

So, I spent around two hours feeling sick and thinking that it would go away when my daughter jumped on me and fell on my stomach pressing it. At that moment, I woke up with a lot of pain in my stomach, and I told them I didn’t feel well. I immediately went to the bathroom, but when I sat down to pee, just as the urine started to come out, I felt a horrible cramp in my belly that made my eyes blur.

I got up as best I could and cleaned up. Shouting, I called my husband and my mother, who were very close by (in the kitchen), to help me because I felt that I was going to faint, and to quickly take me to the couch. They caught me between the two of them, but I didn’t make it to the couch. I had to get on my knees on the carpet and wait for the fainting feeling I was feeling at that moment to go away.

My mother told my husband to take me to the hospital, but I told them it wasn’t necessary, that it would go away and that they should simply put me on the couch. My mother, however, insisted, and my husband took off his pajamas and pulled the car out of the garage, leaving it as close to the front door as possible, since I couldn’t walk because I was so weak at that point.

Between my husband and my mother, they put me in the car and we drove away. Straight to the hospital.  My mother stayed with my children at home and, while my husband drove, I still thought it was unnecessary to go to the hospital, as I thought it would go away.

When we arrived at the hospital, my husband helped me out of the car and I leaned on him while driving because I felt that I could fall at any moment and I felt very weak. When we got there, my husband sat me down and, when it was my turn to go to the emergency room, I was asked to get up and walk to the window, but I couldn’t.

I sat down in a wheelchair, and a nurse took my blood pressure while my husband gave out my personal information.

Then the nurse told the person behind the counter that that was my blood pressure and that it was for both arms (pressure 40, temperature 104).

Quickly two other nurses arrived and three doctors approached. In total, six people took me to the emergency room. I only remember one nurse asking me “how are you feeling madam?”, and I answered, “bad, very bad”. There I was unable to hold my head up and I lost consciousness. My husband was scared to see so many people taking me in.

I heard her talking to me when we reached Cardiology, and when I woke up I was already in the surgery, naked with three intravenous lines and a catheter in my bladder, plus thousands of stickers on my chest with wires connecting me to a machine.

Many people came in and out of the room quickly. They asked me how I was feeling. My answer was “bad, very bad”. I noticed my stomach was very swollen and I had discomfort, but I never had any pain. I felt very weak and not strong at all, and suddenly I felt pressure in my head, but it wasn’t painful either.

They took a lot of blood for thousands of tests and samples. I stayed there for several hours until I was transferred to one of the hospital’s new locations. They always knew that what I had was sepsis.

They gave me a lot of different antibiotics, but none of them worked. So, I stayed in the hospital for three days until they got the results of the samples and started me on the right antibiotic. That’s how, little by little, I started to feel better.

Apparently, the infection started in the urinary tract in November, but I never had any symptoms. From there, the infection went to the kidney and ended up in the blood. I never had any pain, I just felt tired and my stomach was swollen.

I was discharged five days later with intravenous treatment. The nurses would come to my house and take my blood every second day. All the hospital staff behaved extremely well.

Back home I had to spend almost three weeks on bed rest until I was discharged when the intravenous antibiotic ran out.

I went back to work, but sometimes my stomach felt bloated again. My husband said that it was my mind and I thought “well, it’s me, and besides, today I ate a lot and I was very shocked by what happened; since I am a super healthy person who never gets sick, not even with the flu, and the times I went to the hospital were because of my two pregnancies”; so, I didn’t think about it anymore.

I made an appointment with my doctor to see her and to be officially discharged, so I had an appointment on January 28, 2019. There the doctor told me I was fine and again explained everything that had happened before.

I asked her to, please, do two more tests to be 100% sure I no longer had the infection, but she said it wasn’t necessary, even though she was going to do it anyway. That was on the Tuesday of the week of Friday, January 31st.

Leaving work, I realize I had several missed calls from an unidentified number. I looked at my WhatsApp and saw that I had a message from my husband saying that my doctor had been calling me unsuccessfully and that she needed to speak to me urgently

I went to get the medication from hospital pharmacy because the tests showed that I had an infection again, so I restarted the treatment.

When it was over, the doctor took another sample (about four weeks later) and it was bad again, I still had an infection.

Finally, the doctor referred me to the urologist and I am currently in treatment for three months.

I would like to clarify that I have never felt pain or any symptoms of urinary tract infection. Besides, I am a person who has lived and continues to live a very healthy life and who, before all this happened, only got sick from minor case.