Could it be sepsis?

A good friend’s brother died suddenly this week. He was otherwise in pretty good health for a many in his late 60s. The cause was sepsis—a word which I know intimately, but one I suspect most Australians still don’t fully grasp.

I certainly didn’r, until sepsis nearly killed me almost three years ago, leading to the amputation of my lower right leg, I was blindsided. I’d heard of “hospital bugs,” but I didn’t realise I was living through a medical emergency until it was almost too late.

When sepsis strikes, your blood pressure often plummets and your body enters a state of shock. In a desperate bid to survive, your system prioritises your vital organs—like your heart and brain—by pulling blood flow away from your extremities.

This leaves your hands, feet, and limbs starved of oxygen and nutrients. At the same time, the intense inflammation causes tiny blood clots to form in your smallest blood vessels, further cutting off circulation. If this “blood famine” lasts too long, the tissue in your limbs begins to die, leaving surgeons with no choice but to perform an amputation to save your life.

As part of my podcast project, The Limb Shift, I’ve been interviewing amputees, survivors and experts like Professor Simon Finfer. He helped me understand that sepsis isn’t actually an organism you “catch.” Instead, it is a “life-threatening organ dysfunction due to your body’s response to an infection”. It’s essentially a “friendly fire” event: your immune system, while trying to kill a germ, starts damaging your own vital organs and tissues.

The scale of this in Australia is staggering. For a long time, the experts estimated 55,000 cases annually, but recent data shows a much grimmer reality. In the 2022–23 period, more than 84,000 Australians were hospitalised with sepsis, and it now claims more than 12,000 lives each year. That is roughly one in seven patients who won’t return home.

One of the most startling things Simon told me is that 80% of these cases arise in the community—not in hospitals. As he put it, “The most effective way to prevent death and disability from sepsis is to get people treated quickly”.

I also interviewed Mandy McCracken, who lost her hands and feet to the condition. “Sepsis is actually a really common killer,” she told me. “It kills more Australians than breast cancer, prostate cancer and the road toll combined”. For Mandy, it started with a bacterial infection that triggered her body to go into “overdrive”. Within 36 hours, her hands and feet were turning black.

While doctors use drugs to keep your heart and brain alive, those same drugs constrict blood flow to the limbs—what Simon calls the “distal parts”—which is why so many survivors, like me and Mandy, face amputations.

Even for those who survive, the journey is long. Simon noted that 75% of survivors are readmitted to hospital within a year, often due to a repeat episode because the immune system remains suppressed. Mandy described the mental toll, from the “brain fog” of Post-sepsis syndrome to the sheer frustration of learning to use robotic hands.

Today, Mandy is part of the “Quad Squad,” a community helping multiple limb amputees thrive. Her resilience and Simon’s expertise highlight why we need better public awareness. Sepsis claims thousands of lives, yet signs like rapid breathing, mottled skin, or sudden confusion often go unnoticed.

We need to start asking the question more often: Could it be sepsis?

For more information, take a look at the Sepsis Australia website, https://www.australiansepsisnetwork.net.au/