A Near Death Experience at 38

Quitman, MSReginald, just 38 years old, nearly died this year. He received some tainted heparin which resulted in his developing a life-threatening infection, and subsequently requiring open-heart surgery. Now he's taking legal action against Baxter, the company responsible for the tainted heparin, because if he hadn't checked himself into the hospital, he would have died.

"Early in March I was having dialysis at the center, as I usually do, as treatment for my kidney disease," Reginald said. "But this particular morning I felt sick after dialysis, and so I went straight home. "A couple of hours later I developed a fever, so I went to bed, and for two days suffered fevers and chills, muscle spasms and muscle aches."

But Reginald didn't appear to be getting any better. So, after two days Reginald's wife decided something wasn't right, and took her husband to the hospital. They admitted him and treated him immediately for pneumonia. But his fever never broke, and his blood pressure wouldn't go back to normal. "The doctors discovered I had an infection," Reginald said. "They did some tests and the next thing I know they were talking to my wife telling her I had to have open heart surgery. They told her before they told me. I was shocked and scared. I really wasn't prepared for that--it was high blood pressure that had caused my kidney failure."

But worse was yet to come. "The doctor said that when they opened me up the area around my heart was full of puss and blood clots," Reginald said. "They asked me how long I had been like that–like I was supposed to know. It was a shock for the doctor as well, I guess. I told him that I was just fine before my last dialysis. I had gone for a short run, and done a little work in the yard. And I've never had any problem.

After the surgery, they put me on an antibiotic for six weeks. I spent four of those weeks in the hospital. When I got home my health insurer didn't want to pay for the remaining two weeks of antibiotics. So in order to get them to cover the costs, I had to admit myself to hospital every day, just to take the medicine. As soon as I'd taken my antibiotic, they let me go home–that happened every day for two weeks."

Reginald asked three different doctors for possible explanations as to the cause of the infection. "Each one of them said it was the dialysis. I asked my wife how they knew, and she said the doctors had run a number of tests on me."

Nobody mentioned heparin to Reginald. But the other medicines he'd been taking he'd been on for years and had never had a problem.

Reginald is, thankfully, over the infection. And he has trained to do home haemodialysis. "The dialysis clinic also damaged my hand. It's numb, and they say it could take some time for the feeling to come back. So I trained to be able to do dialysis at home. And, I've been contacted by a lawyer. At the end of the day, I'm in God's hands," he said.