Caitlin Alsop was enjoying a ‘quiet dinner’ with friends when her life was suddenly turned upside down.
The 27-year-old Australian had been feeling “a bit” under the weather for the past few days – but after consulting her doctor, he was convinced it was just the flu.
“And so I took it very easily. On Saturday I was with my friends for a quiet dinner and I felt [all of a sudden] like I had bitten my tongue,” Allsopp recalled in an interview with SEEN TV.
Within hours, however, her tongue “was pretty swollen and my airway started to close up a little bit.”
“It was so hard to breathe and I couldn’t talk,” Alsop said.
Upon arrival at the hospital, doctors initially suspected she was in anaphylaxis – a severe allergic reaction.
“There was this really shallow feeling of shortness of breath and it’s really a sick feeling. I feel sick and I just feel exhausted,” Allsop said.
“But I had nothing [out of the ordinary to eat]. I had a vegan burger.”
Doctors gave her adrenaline and steroids – but Alsop’s condition continued to deteriorate “rapidly”.
“I kept going in and out of consciousness,” he said.
“My skin was red and blue and actually peeling. My mom describes it as a microwave that was burning from the inside out,” he said.
“And then my tongue turned black. And there were discussions about amputation…[They were] trying to figure out what was going on. And I’m so grateful to the doctors and nurses and the whole medical team for saving my life, because I was a mystery for quite some time.
“[Finally] there was an anesthesiologist who actually said, “We don’t know what it is, but it might be Ludwig’s angina.”
The rare oral floor infection is caused by a trapped wisdom tooth that, in Alsop’s case, led to sepsis — the life-threatening response to an infection that can lead to organ failure.
“The twist with me here is that I had absolutely no pain, no symptoms, no problems with my teeth,” he added.
“It’s just that my tooth – my wisdom tooth – was knocked out and infected in my jaw. And that almost made me die.”
Doctors had to “put me in a coma and paralyze me because I really needed to be completely sedated,” Allsopp said, and even considered amputating her tongue.
“So in a knock out, put on life support because they have to keep your oxygen, they have to keep your airway,” he said.
“And they also need to make sure that your organs don’t start to shut down, which is the biggest concern of sepsis and why it’s such a medical emergency.”
Eventually, she did – and when she awoke from the coma, Alsop said she had “never felt… so grateful to be alive”.
“I can’t even explain it – to feel like you can breathe. You can see. You are able to listen. You know, everything looks like kids again. It’s like being born again, in a way,” he explained.
“I was so, so grateful to be here and to get this second chance at life.”
Alsop is now passionate about raising awareness about sepsis, “because an infection can happen to anyone,” which prompted her to launch her moment of #communityconfidence.
“This is the story of millions of people out there and the difference we can make when we work together,” he said.
“I speak to the most incredible people who have actually been affected by rot or lost someone to rot. And it’s always the same words. I wish we knew. I wish we had known earlier.”
