Endometriosis left Sammi in crippling pain. But when she had surgery to fix it, the horror really started

Hours after being discharged from hospital following abdominal surgery, Sammi Hassan was hit by a sharp stabbing sensation that left her ‘howling’ in pain.

‘It felt like something terrible was happening inside me,’ says Sammi, 33, a mother of two who works in banking.

She was used to severe pain. Every month she ended up doubled over in agony on her bedroom floor as a result of endometriosis – where cells from the lining of the womb grow elsewhere in the body, which can be especially painful around a woman’s period. But this was at another level.

‘It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life,’ she recalls. ‘It took my breath away and made me stop dead in my tracks – it was burning and radiating and constantly worsening.

‘I was crying, almost howling in pain. I didn’t want the kids to see me like that. It was so distressing.’

She called the hospital where the surgery had taken place and was told ‘it might even be period pain as my period was due’, says Sammi, who lives in Essex with her husband, Tarik, 37, and daughters, Isabella, four and Celine, two.

Within hours her condition worsened dramatically.

‘My hands and lips turned blue and became ice-cold to touch,’ she recalls. ‘I was becoming delirious and my heart was racing. I honestly felt doomed. I felt like I was dying.’

Sammi’s mum rang for an ambulance but with no sign of the ambulance 40 minutes after the 999 call, her desperately worried parents drove her to Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow.

Luckily for her, the doctors noticed her heart was racing and her blood pressure was plummeting and correctly suspected she had sepsis – a potentially deadly reaction to an infection which can shut down vital organs within hours.

She was put on IV-drip antibiotics while doctors ran checks to confirm their suspicions. Her parents were later told she’d been just an hour away from death.

‘Sepsis occurs when infections turn bad,’ explains Dr Andrew Conway Morris, a consultant in intensive care and clinical academic at the University of Cambridge, and medical director of the charity Sepsis Research FEAT.

‘Any infection – bacterial, viral or fungal – can trigger it,‘ he says.

Instead of just fighting the bug, the immune system starts damaging the body’s own tissues, leading to widespread inflammation and potential damage to crucial organs such as the lungs, kidneys, liver and brain.

In Sammi’s case the trigger was an infection following the surgery she had to remove the endometrial tissue that had caused her such agony for years and was wrapped around her pelvic organs, bladder and bowel.

The sad irony was the sepsis led to the worst pain of her life.

Sepsis is one of the UK’s biggest killers, claiming an estimated 50,000 lives every year – more than breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined.

Nobody knows why some people get sepsis, while others don’t.

‘Some people will get an infection and be absolutely fine,’ says Dr Conway Morris. ‘Another person, who is in similar health and has the same infection, becomes critically ill.’

Those most at risk include infants and the elderly, but ‘anyone can be affected by sepsis – even the very healthy’ Dr Conway Morris adds.

Sammi was otherwise fit and well, but ‘sepsis hit me like a deer in headlights’, she says.

She’d been keen to have surgery after developing what is known as scar endometriosis, which occurs when cells from the womb lining are accidentally transferred to the abdominal wall during surgery – in her case the caesarean birth of her first daughter in 2022.

The endometriosis tissue that then developed on her abdominal wall was removed during the birth of her second daughter, but the monthly agony returned – which is why she underwent surgery to remove the tissue once more in September last year.

What no one noticed at the time was that her bowel was perforated during the operation and her abdomen was flooded with waste, causing the infection that developed into sepsis.

In fact, the surgery was judged to be a success and Sammi was discharged from hospital the following day. Within 48 hours the intense pain started spreading across her abdomen.

Dr Conway Morris says pain can be a feature of sepsis, especially following surgery.

‘If it doesn’t respond to simple painkillers or seems to be disproportionate to the surgery that has been undertaken, it may be a sign of sepsis,’ he explains.

Abdominal infections, such as those from bowel perforations after surgery, are a major cause of sepsis.

‘Bowel surgery always carries a risk of leakage of bowel contents with lots of bacteria in it,’ says Dr Conway Morris.

That’s why, he says, patients having bowel surgery ‘should be made aware of the symptoms of potential complications’, such as sepsis.

Once sepsis takes hold, it can progress with terrifying speed.

‘Your time for seeking medical advice is short – a matter of hours,’ says Dr Conway Morris. ‘Six to 12 hours can be the difference between life and death.’

The danger is that early symptoms look vague or flu-like, and there is no single test that can definitively diagnose sepsis. Doctors must rely on clinical judgment, piecing together symptoms and blood results.

Signs they watch for include having a very high or very low temperature, confusion, extreme weakness, fast breathing or rapid heart rate, producing little or no urine, feeling cold, having mottled or blue hands and feet, and a rash that doesn’t fade when pressed.

‘Patients will sometimes say, “I feel like I’m going to die,”’ says Dr Conway Morris. ‘That sense of impending doom is real and points to sepsis.’

Sammi is grateful her parents decided to get her to hospital so quickly.

‘If I’d waited for the ambulance we’d called I probably wouldn’t be here now,’ she says.

At hospital Sammi underwent emergency surgery to repair her bowel and clear the infection.

‘If there’s pus, or a hole in the bowel, it will keep leaking,’ explains Dr Conway Morris. ‘If you don’t control the source, you won’t control the sepsis.’

It happened so quickly she says that ‘by the time the ambulance – which nobody had remembered to cancel – arrived at my house, I was already being wheeled into surgery.’

However, during the operation she went into septic shock – where blood pressure drops so low that not enough blood reaches major organs, which can result in multi-organ failure and death.

Critically ill, Sammi was placed in an induced coma and transferred to intensive care.

Over the next three weeks she required more surgery and she was put on the highest strength IV antibiotics available.

Her loved ones were unsure whether she would make it.

‘My husband couldn’t always be with me because he was trying to take care of our girls, and all he could think about was, “How am I going to tell the girls in the morning that their mum’s no longer here?,”’ says Sammi.

At one point the doctors were unsure she would make it ‘and they got my husband and parents to come to the hospital immediately – I guess to say goodbye’, she recalls.

Sammi emerged from her coma the next day and spent ten days in intensive care, becoming panicked and confused as she regained awareness.

She was discharged after three weeks, but as is the case for half of those who survive sepsis, Sammi has been left with post-sepsis syndrome – new or worsening symptoms following the initial illness.

Symptoms can include crushing fatigue, breathlessness, muscle and joint pain, poor sleep, memory problems, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Patients, like Sammi, who spent time in intensive care are particularly affected – yet follow-up care is often patchy.

‘We spend enormous resources saving people in ICU,’ says Dr Conway Morris. ‘Then we let them out, and the support just isn’t there.’

Six months on, Sammi says: ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person ever again. It’s changed my life for ever.’

She is still undergoing physiotherapy to make up for the muscle loss that occurred during her weeks spent immobile in a hospital bed.

‘I’ve had therapy to help me breathe normally again and I also have weekly mental health therapy for my PTSD, panic attacks and anxiety. I also have terrible short-term memory loss.

‘I’ve made good progress but I’m still struggling, and I don’t know when – or if – I’ll be able to go back to work.’

The worst impact has been on her relationship with her children.

‘My eldest daughter had started school just two weeks before my sepsis happened,’ she recalls. ‘At the time she really needed me. She remembers me crying out in pain and she overheard people saying I could die.

‘But my relationship with my youngest daughter has suffered most, and it’s heartbreaking. She turned two the week I came out of hospital and I simply wasn’t able to care for her – I couldn’t pick her up or even cuddle her.

‘As a result, probably as a protection mechanism, she rejects me now. She doesn’t want me to do anything for her and she has a meltdown when her daddy leaves. That’s been particularly painful and I hope it improves.’

She says she wants to warn others of the symptoms of sepsis, so other families don’t suffer as hers has.

‘Sepsis doesn’t discriminate. Always ask the question – could it be sepsis? If it’s caught early, the possibility of a good outcome is so much higher.’