Quadruple amputee Sherri Moody with husband David Moody.Photo:GoFundMe
GoFundMe
A Texas teacher is adjusting to life without limbs after a strep infection caused her to go intoseptic shock— which required doctors to amputate her arms and legs to save her life.
Last April, Deer Park, Texas, high school teacher Sherri Moody started feeling sick following a school field trip — something she initially dismissed as a run-of-the-mill illness.
But when she started having trouble breathing, her husband David took her to the hospital, the couple toldToday.com.
“I’ve never gone to the ER before in my life,” Sherri, 51, told the outlet. “I was very healthy, very in shape. I ate right, exercised.”
Sherri Moody and husband David Moody speak to Click2Houston.KPRC 2 Click2Houston/YouTube
KPRC 2 Click2Houston/YouTube
Symptoms of Streptococcus pneumonia include fever and chills, cough, difficulty breathing, and chest pain,the CDC says, and explains that sepsis — defined as “the body’s extreme response to an infection” — is a risk of the illness.
Doctors then told the Moodys that Sherri had sepsis.
“I had to Google whatsepsiswas. I had no idea. We’re pretty healthy people,” David, 53, told the outlet. “I recognized real quick that we were in a severe situation. I was scared to pieces.”
Complicating her prognosis was an immune-suppressing medication Sherri had been taking forrheumatoid arthritis.
“It was like a Category 5 hurricane coming in,” David toldToday. “She had nothing to fight with. It’s like she went to war with no soldiers.”
Her kidneys and lungs began to shut down, and the mom of one son, Jake, was placed in a medically induced coma while doctors worked to save her life in the intensive care unit.
Part of her care included vasopressors, a powerful medication that theCleveland Clinicexplains forces blood vessels to narrow, making the heart pump more forcefully.
“The use of vasopressors in the management ofseptic shockis vital,” theNational Library of Medicineexplains. But they do come with a risk to extremities, as their use poses a serious risk of blocking blood flow.
That can lead “to tissue necrosis and amputation. Acute limb ischemia is associated with high morbidity and mortality.”
And that’s what happened with Sherri, her husband said.
“I literally watched my wife’s feet and hands die,” he said. “They were black and they were mummified.”
When she woke from her coma, Sherri was told that doctors wouldn’t be able to save her limbs.
“I’m very mentally strong,” Sherri toldToday. “I just choose to be happy … It’s not to say that I don’t have a breakdown every now and then and just cry a little bit. I don’t let it last long.”
Friends have set up aGoFundMeto help the family defray the cost of medical bills and prosthetic limbs, which she hopes to get at some point.
“There’s a dark road that we could easily go down … I know Sherri smiles and she is beautiful and it’s very authentic,” David toldClick2Houston, adding, “The days are challenging.”
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“I learned all kinds of things as far as how to do my hair and makeup and brush my teeth and eat,” Sherri said, sharing that her daughter-in-law Mika helps.
“We remind each other to choose joy in the day,” she said.
“When people get down, I know it’s easy to say but it’s a choice,” she told the station, “but for me what works is to just choose it and to say quick, ‘Tell me a joke’ or ‘What’s the best memory we’ve had.'”
The family shares updates on her progress, as well as fundraiser information, on theirFacebook group.
source: people.com
