Heartbeat: Radio star reveals how Sandwell Hospital “saved her life”
March 18, 2019
Colleagues at Sandwell Hospital have been praised by BBC WM presenter Samantha Meah for her care after she went into septic shock.
The host spent three weeks in our hospital’s critical care unit. She revealed details of the terrifying details live on her new morning show Sam & Daz, which she presents with Daz Hale, earlier this month.
Sam said: “I didn’t realise that it was sepsis at the time, but I was suddenly frozen cold.
“I was shaking, my teeth were chattering. I could not open the computer that was in front of me. I knew something was seriously wrong.
“We were about to interview Faye Tozer from Strictly and I was all excited about that, but was so incapable of doing anything.
“So an ambulance was called and they took 45 minutes to stabilise me. I was taken to Sandwell Hospital where I was seen and treated extremely quickly.”
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that comes when the body’s response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs.
UK Sepsis Trust said it kills 52,000 per year – five people per hour.
Antibiotic treatment should start within an hour of diagnosis to reduce the risk of serious complications or death.
Sam added: “I had a CT scan and discovered that I had been walking around for some time with a perforated bowel, because I have diverticular disease as a lot of people do.
“In my case I had an episode I was unaware of; I had a perforation in the bowel, that had caused an infection. The infection had spread to my liver, so I had abscesses on my liver and then the infection in turn spread to my lungs. So I was full of nasty and unpleasant infection.”
Diverticular disease is a condition that affects the large bowel. It happens when small pouches develop in the lining of the bowel and push out through the bowel wall – which in some people can cause stomach pain.
Her co-presenter Daz Hale has called Sam ‘a pro’ and asked her what would have happened if she had gone into septic shock at home.
She replied: “I would have died. They saved my life at Sandwell. I was in intensive care for a few days, had two blood transfusions and I was in there for three weeks. They literally saved my life.”