Unbeknownst to Sally and her doctors, this would be the beginning of a series of events that would bring her very near to death, and result in 25 plus operations, approximately 40 days in intensive care, and more than three and half months in hospital.
Not surprisingly, Sally doesn't remember the details of what happened to her over that time. But she does remember how bizarre and frightening the whole situation was, and how it baffled the doctors. That is until somebody in her church found a small news story in the local paper about people dying after having been given heparin made by Baxter Healthcare. "This person gave the article to my husband who in turn gave it to my doctor. And my doctor is very sure that that's what caused the problems," she said. But this information didn't come to light until after everything went very seriously wrong.
"The doctors gave me three shots of heparin in three different places to get rid of the blood clot in my lung. As a result, more blood clots formed at the sites of injections. It was really weird. But when they opened me up, they found a lot of blood had pooled in my stomach,' Sally said.The doctors didn't know what was going on. "I had a lot of internal swelling, and all my vital organs began shutting down. The doctors had no idea what was going on - no one had any idea this was caused by heparin," she said. "The doctors said they had never seen anything like it. They told my husband that he should call my family in because I was probably going to die."
But Sally was fortunate. "The lord blessed me with wonderful doctors. My surgeon took me back into the operating room and cut me from my chest to my pelvic area. For some reason that eased all the pressure, and my organs started working again," she said. "The wound on my stomach was so huge that they put a special mesh over it to keep it closed and help it heal."
Sally was in what is probably one of the best medical facilities in the United States, staffed by doctors who specialize in combat injuries and who have access to some of the most advanced medical technologies. "I was at a military hospital - the Intrepid - that was created for the soldiers coming back from overseas with gut wounds, and limb losses. So this was the level of medicine that was available to me. The doctors were familiar with procedures that would be required in extraordinary circumstances," she said. "A lot of the things they used on me were the things they used for the soldiers. For example, they have something they call a wound-vac, that they set it into a wound and it keeps vacuuming all the bad stuff out. They used that on me. I was so out of it I didn't realize that's what they were doing. People told me afterwards this went on.
"This is probably why my life was saved - I had medical expertise available to me that most other people at other hospitals may not have," she said.
In total, Sally had 25 operations, with approximately 40 days in the intensive care unit.
"It seemed like every 72 hours something would go wrong again," she said. "So the doctors would have to send me back to surgery. They ended up taking out one foot of my intestine, and that's caused me problems now, it interferes with my ability to get all the nutrients out of my food." In fact while Sally was in hospital she had to have special food made for her. "I was on something called TPN - a bag of food that you are given intravenously. It's created for each patient individually. It costs about $1000 per bag, so that's what it cost to feed me every day."
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"The first time I saw anything about heparin in the news 20 people had died, but there hasn't been much after that. You'd think it would be big news," says Sally. That is why she is telling her story—to help others who may have experienced or known someone who has experienced severe medical problems as a result of being given tainted heparin. Sally and her family have successfully sought legal help and she would advise anyone who has had a similar experience with tainted heparin to do the same.