After more than a week in the hospital and spending days in a medically induced coma to combat sepsis, Virginia Beach resident Audrey Leishman remembers the discharge nurse coming into her room.
The nurse told Leishman she would need a central catheter line in her arm for ten days, antibiotics, a walker, a bedside commode, a shower chair and at-home physical therapy. She told Leishman how much it would cost — sepsis hospitalizations are some of the most expensive cases to treat in the United States.
“At the end of it, she says, ‘Is that okay’?” Leishman recalled. “And I thought to myself, ‘Well, what if it wasn’t okay? Like, what if I didn’t have the money for this, because I can’t go home without these things?’”
Leishman survived sepsis, a life-threatening overreaction of the immune system in response to an infection, more than a decade ago following an IUD removal and tampon use.
She didn’t know what to expect and was unfamiliar with sepsis. A decade on from her illness, Leishman decided to write and publish a book to help parents and children learn more about the life-threatening infection.
She remembers lying in bed with a high fever, thinking she had the flu or a virus. She was admitted to the hospital and tested for various autoimmune diseases — but no one seemed to know what was wrong with her.
It’s truly a miracle that she lived, Leishman said.
Years after her experience, Leishman wondered how she could reach parents and make them aware of symptoms in a gentle way. That’s when the idea for her children’s book, “Katie Koala’s Biggest Fight,” came in. The book follows a young koala who gets a scratch on her knee while at summer camp and develops sepsis. Her mother and doctor recognize her symptoms and are able to treat her.
When Leishman herself had sepsis, her children were three years old and 19 months old.
“A book like this would have been really helpful, too. So I could read this, and it explains sepsis in a way that children can understand and absorb,” Leishman said.
It was a learning curve figuring out how to write it — she had never written a book before — but Leishman describes the project as her “heart in print.”
The same year she had her bout with sepsis, Leishman founded the Begin Again Foundation to support other sepsis survivors and ease their financial burdens. The organization hosts celebrity golf tournaments; gives out bereavement and amputee grants; delivers feminine hygiene products to homeless shelters and has donated more than $2 million to support survivors.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would be international or to have raised this much money,” Leishman said. “But probably the most amazing thing we’ve done is save lives.”
She knows of multiple people who recognized sepsis symptoms because of the foundation’s work and are alive because of it. But she’s also seen stories of parents who take their children who have sepsis to doctors, only for their symptoms to be mistaken for a virus.
The foreword of “Katie Koala’s Biggest Fight” was written by the doctor who saved Leishman’s life, and the back of the book has a page with pictures illustrating sepsis symptoms. All the proceeds from the sales go back to the Begin Again Foundation.
The book was released July 14, and its goal, Leishman said, is to save lives.