Season 3 Episode 1: The Moment My Body Shut Down

A few weeks ago my body went into septic shock and I spent eight days in ICU. 

In this episode of The Hurdle2Hope® Show, I share what happened when I went to emergency after weeks of worsening gut symptoms, only to discover my body was going into septic shock. 

What began as a visit to hospital quickly escalated as my condition deteriorated and doctors worked to understand what was happening. 

This episode was recorded from my hospital room and is the first episode in a new series called Health Crisis in Real Time, where I share what happened during this unexpected health crisis and the lessons I am learning about resilience, healing and navigating serious illness. 

For more than 25 years I have lived with multiple sclerosis, and I am also in remission from stage 4 breast cancer. This crisis had nothing to do with either condition, which made the experience even more confronting. 

In this episode I talk about: 

• The morning I realised something was seriously wrong 
• Going to emergency and rapidly deteriorating 
• Being diagnosed with septic shock 
• Eight days in ICU and not responding to treatment as expected 
• The emotional shock of experiencing my body shutting down 
• What helped me stay mentally strong in the darkest moments 

Septic shock is a life-threatening medical emergency where the body’s response to infection causes blood pressure to drop dangerously low. 

Many people talk about ICU experiences after they have recovered. In this series I’m sharing what it has been like while still processing the experience myself. 

If you live with chronic illness, have experienced a medical crisis, or are supporting someone through serious health challenges, I hope this conversation offers both perspective and hope. 

Learn more about Teisha’s work supporting women living with chronic illness:
https://TeishaRose.com 

Follow Hurdle2Hope:
Instagram: @Hurdle2Hope
Facebook: Hurdle2Hope 

 If you’re feeling overwhelmed by a health challenge, download the free guide here:

 https://teisharose.com/overwhelmed/

If you’re ready for more support, explore the Thriving Through Chronic Illness course and one-on-one coaching here:

 https://teisharose.com/thriving

WHERE TO GO NEXT

If you’re navigating a health challenge, you can find support and resources at
TeishaRose.com

If you’re a professional or organisation looking to strengthen connection and resilience in your work, visit
Hurdle2Hope.com

I’d love to connect with you,
Teisha

Also, are you following @hurdle2hope on social media? I’d love to see you there.

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Transcript

Season 3 – Health Crisis in Real Time
Episode 1: The Moment My Body Shut Down 

Teisha Rose: [00:00:00] Hey there, Teisha here and welcome to my hospital room and episode one of season three of The Hurdle2Hope® Show. I haven't been around for a little bit. Leading up to the end of year, I intentionally took some time off. I was feeling a little bit rundown and yeah, had a bit of a, a break from the podcast and I was planning to, do some more interviews again in 2026 but life took an unexpected turn and so season three, I'm sharing with you what's happened over the last month. So yeah, I hope you get a lot out of this series. I've called, Health Crisis in Real Time and in this episode, episode one, I'll share the moment my body shut down.

 [00:01:00] Okay. So I'm doing this very stripped back in terms of just having a really a chat, I guess, , because I am sitting in my hospital room. But I wanted to share with you, what a, bit of a nightmare this last month has been. It hasn't had anything to do with MS or with, cancer fortunately, both of those are being behaving really well.

But. I as mentioned, I was feeling really run down. Um, leading up to Christmas I had my PET scan, which was all clear. Um, so once you get that PET scan and you're told you are in remission, I think that meant I thought, the fatigue and, you know, not feeling well, didn't have anything to do with cancer.

Massive win so I thought nothing to worry about. I should say, sorry, apologies my voice isn't sounding great, but as I share what's going on, [00:02:00] you'll know, um, there's reason for that. And also as I've shared in previous episodes when I was going through all , the cancer stuff, I also dealt with.

Muscle tension, dysphonia, the tightening of the muscle above my voice box. And I think the trauma of everything I've been going through over the last month has triggered that a bit, but that's okay. I have a speech therapist that can help me with that when I get out of hospital.

Okay. So I'll give you a, a brief breakdown. I don't wanna go into all the medical of what happened because for me it's more about the experience and what I learned from it and what it felt like. Um, so yeah, I had had gut issues, for a couple of weeks, sort of post-Christmas and thought maybe I hadn't been as strict with my whole gluten-free thing.

I wasn't sure what was going on. And yeah, it just kept getting worse until on a Saturday night. About a month ago, I started passing [00:03:00] blood and you know, when you're half asleep you think, oh, is that blood? I wasn't sure. I wasn't too stressed about it. But that morning, um, never experienced anything like it.

I was half asleep. I'm trying to wake up and I kept saying, Andrew, there's, there's things in my head. I'm trying, I'm trying to get it out. And I, I just couldn't get my words out. Not brain fog, which I've had before with ms. Um, but such a strange experience, which , I was told by doctors later on that I was delirious with, what was going on in my body.

So then, you know, I got up, I passed more blood, um, and thought something's not right. Quickly had a shower. I remember after the shower, I just lay on the bed, thought I just wanna curl up. You know, I didn't have energy, to get up or do anything, but I thought, that's not a good idea. So we thought, no, we need to go we thought into emergency in Maryborough [00:04:00] near where we live. But it's very small emergency and Andrew's like, Nope, let's go to Ballarat. And thank goodness we thought clearly in this moment of crisis, because going to Ballarat definitely saved me. And if you know me, he always plays things down, but if we hadn't have gone to Ballarat, I'd know I wouldn't have made it.

And we were really calm. We chose a good hospital to go to. Fortunately we do have private healthcare and thank goodness we did. . Because it's like as soon as I arrived in emergency, I relaxed and I thought, okay, I'm safe. And they took me straight through. And an incredible emergency doctor ran all these tests and I was just going downhill really quickly. Fever, you know, my temperature spiked, [00:05:00] um, shivering. Then, you know, Andrew kept saying, you're so white. And my face was just ghostly white. Then he was looking at my hands and it's like, they're going yellow. Um, so my arm started going yellow.

My blood pressure dropped. Um, and here I was thinking, oh, hopefully they think I'm bad enough to justify going to emergency. I was thinking, oh, hopefully I might get a night, to get some, um, hydration because I've never felt so thirsty. I've never felt so dry in my mouth.

Anyway, things went downhill pretty quickly. Um, as it, yeah, I just felt my body. Um, it's strange to explain, but, it's like the life force of your body is just being drained away. Um, I. All of that was really scary.

And what I've learned in going through [00:06:00] some of these really dark times is I always ask, give me a sign that I'm in the right place. Give me a sign that everything's gonna be okay. I did that as I laid down and then the surgeon came in, a bowel surgeon, beautiful person.

He was so lovely. And, uh, he had talking about, you know, surgeries I'd had and I told him, I've gone through two single mastectomies. Told him the surgeon was an angel, that she was such a beautiful person. And he said he was a register under that surgeon, which was in a different town to where we were then. And I thought, thank you. I just thought, no, everything's gonna be okay. You know, we've been surrounded by people who are gonna look after me. Then things ramped up. I didn't go in to, the normal ward. I was taken straight to the ICU when they got the results of all the [00:07:00] scans and blood tests and yeah, apparently I found out now my inflammation markers, which I've now learned about, were off the charts. So there was something like 200, they should be under five. They didn't know what was causing it. I was in septic shock.

So the next few days were a bit of a blur. I was in such a dark place, I was. Pushed to the brink, it was, you know, I just felt my body wasn't responding to treatment. I had what they call a septic shower, which means I'd pump you with fluids, pump me with so many antibiotics.

I had cannulas coming outta both arms. Um, the concern was my blood pressure wouldn't, um, stay above sort of 80 without them helping me along. You know, one night it dropped to 66 over 50, and I just felt the world sort of closing in. [00:08:00] Um, yeah, so, so much happened. So much happened during that time. I won't go through all the, the medical stuff, but,

the scary thing was I just wasn't responding to anything. The markers did come down, which was good, but then they spiked back up. So they didn't know what was going on. But the ICU doctors were incredible. Um, I was so blessed, you know, they, the head ICU doctor came in and said, I know it's really scary when you are not a usual case because I just wasn't responding like I should. And I said to him, no, no, no. I said, unusual is good. And I explained to him how I wasn't going down the normal path for MS. You know, it's been inactive since 2012. I haven't had a relapse. And then I said, with cancer, and I said, stage four cancer to start with.

I said, I'm in remission and I'm only in remissions through doing lots I do, but [00:09:00] also through hormone blockers. So I explained all that to him and I said, you know, you guys get to it. I said, you work out what to do? I said, I'll keep myself right here, um, you know, emotionally and mentally, and I'll get through this.

Um, but you don't need to rush it. Um, because I knew I was in for a long haul and it was, I was in ICU for eight days. Which is a long time. But yeah, they got me to a point where I could leave ICU. My blood pressure was stable, which was good. They'd given me all different treatments and then I had to, leave ICU with a gut, which was sort of getting right, um, to then go onto the ward and have preparation for colonoscopy.

So that was interesting. Had the, had to clear out the bowel again. The colonoscopy was good. Showed massive ulceration right through my bowel and colon. And they still weren't sure exactly what [00:10:00] had caused that. And then, yeah, I've been in the ward for the. The next sort of few weeks, um, trying different treatments, trying to work out what's going on.

It could be Crohn's disease and not sure, because it could also be a range of things. And I said, don't care. I don't care about another label. It doesn't matter. Let's just treat the symptoms and then when I get out of here, I'll be treating the causes and, I can do a lot with diet more, um, be a bit more strict, I guess, and not many lifestyle changes in terms of, living at Daisy Hill does gimme a lot of peace, and space for healing. Um, but. Yeah, it's, I guess the healing for this will be around the shock of experiencing your body shutting down. Um, and that's something I've never had to go through. You know, my friend said, [00:11:00] you've gone through the trilogy And I'm like, what do you mean?

And she said, well, chronic illness with MS. And it's true. I've lived with MS for well over half my life then. And she said, well then the whole stage four cancer thing. True. You know, that was such a shock to the system. And you know, it's a big thing to carry knowing that you've been diagnosed with what's considered an incurable disease.

I've changed the narrative to that and now I've physically felt my body shut down. And that will definitely take quite a lot to process. And the shock of it, especially sort of week two of being in here, you know, I was crying a lot and I just let those tears be, which I probably haven't done well in the past, but I thought no, lots of the emotions from dealing [00:12:00] with cancer as well are coming out and I think that's healthy.

Um, and yeah, this is just gonna be a long, ongoing process. So I sit here, not sure when I'm leaving the hospital, still in quite a bit of pain. Um, still I won't show you my stomach big. Big stomach. I put on 12 kilos in a week with all the fluids they pumped into my body. That's been difficult, in terms of most of that went onto my legs, so very difficult in walking, with MS but we've got rid of nearly nine kilos of that. So feeling better with that and then very open now in terms of what I do, whether it's Crohn's or it doesn't really matter, you know, um, on some treatment that they use for Crohn's. We'll see whether that works, but then I'll get to it, um, and do what I do in terms of calling in all, all of my supports, whether it's having reiki sessions, my physio [00:13:00] sessions, which I need, lymph drainage, which I need, speech therapy, which I need massage, all of those things get my body back.

I've been very fortunate. My doctor here has been consulting with my neurologist who's sort of guided in terms of what medications are good or not so good for ms. He's also been in contact with my oncologist. I guess my greatest fear was all the ulceration was in relation to metastasized cancer. Um lodging itself in my colon, but, um, fortunately that wasn't the case. So that was a big relief. Um, but you know, I'll be in contact with my oncologist as well when I'm out. So I've got an incredible team. And yeah, I'm very grateful to be alive. Um, and I think for me, as I look back on all this, it's almost good. I often play down, you know, how serious some of the things [00:14:00] I go through are. And I think it's been almost good that I did have such a significant time in the ICU, um, because no denying, you know, it's been, it's been, yeah. Not only emotionally, really difficult, mentally, very difficult to get through, but physically, um, it's been a lot on my body.

Um, so I know now I have to take care of myself and yeah, just get into the zone of healing and not putting a timeline on it, and hopefully, getting back to my normal, whatever my normal is. So that's just a bit of an outline of what happened. And I share this mainly because we don't know, we don't know when life is going to change.

When I was having Christmas this year, there's no way I would've thought that I'd end up [00:15:00] in hospital. And if I did, I'd be thinking, oh, I'm probably ms. Or cancer, I wouldn't have thought some bowel problem. Um, but life changes, changes like that and we don't need to live in fear of that. And hopefully I can share some of the things that help me get through not only this massive crisis, um, yeah but I guess what I've used in the past as well, which have helped me to get through this because we can get through it. You know that the resilience we have in those darkest moments, if we have been working on ourselves, then they come to the forefront. And I don't know, in, in that moment. And when I was reflecting, I thought, how did I get through it because it was so dark.

But you know, when we work on ourselves, the lightness will always guide us through. And I [00:16:00] really believe that. And so I guess that's my motivation as well. You know, let's learn from all of this.

Let's find out what you can take from this as well to help support others who are going through things and will help you somehow in your life as well. So I'm gonna take a breath because I'm a little bit tired. Um, but yeah, I'm really looking forward to this series.

Hop on, socials @Hurdle2Hope on Instagram i'm sharing, different things, what I'm going through, and some different reels. Also Facebook @hurdle2hope and yeah, let's go on this journey together. Chat soon.

Actually one more thing before I go check out TeishaRose.com. Who would've thought a website under my name? Um, but before all this happened, I actually had someone approach me who'd read my book, a few times over the last 10 years and asked [00:17:00] whether I was doing coaching. Coaching was something I was really wanting to do.

I've had a course for, women mainly living with chronic illness, but I wasn't sure what to do with that. But as I said, during, this podcast, I'm all about signs. And this was absolutely a sign for me that that was something I can offer and this experience has confirmed, I guess that I do have a lot to offer in this space.

So yeah, if you are living with a chronic illness, if you know someone who is, please check out TeishaRose.com. And , there's all the information there. 

​[00:18:00]