Audrey Wiggins was caring for her two young sons, ages 19 months and 3 years, when she felt what seemed at first like a bad flu. She was 31 and healthy, but the fever kept climbing, her stomach problems turned severe and, before long, she was too weak to look after the children she had been watching at home in Virginia Beach.
What looked like a routine illness turned into a medical emergency. Wiggins was taken from urgent care by ambulance to the emergency room after doctors found her temperature and heart rate were abnormally high and her blood pressure dangerously low, signs that pointed to severe sepsis. She later spent 10 days in the ICU, including five days in a medically induced coma, before she pulled through.
Wiggins said the first hours were especially confusing because the symptoms did not line up neatly with one illness. She said she had never really had the flu before, but she felt achy, feverish and cold, which made her think that was all it was. Then came pain in her right elbow and left big toe so strange that she wondered whether she was imagining it. Doctors initially suspected autoimmune diseases, and she said it took a long time to determine what was actually happening.
The episode now sits at the center of her sepsis-awareness work, including efforts with the Begin Again Foundation and a children's book meant to help families spot warning signs sooner. The timing carries added weight in the wake of NASCAR star Kyle Busch's death from sepsis, a reminder of how quickly the condition can overwhelm even people who seem otherwise healthy.
Wiggins said hospitals have come a long way in recognizing sepsis since 2015, but her own case shows how easily the illness can still masquerade as something far less serious. Her path from flu-like symptoms to the ICU is the part she keeps returning to, because that is where the window for treatment can close fast.
