• Your blood pressure might have dropped because your illness caused your arteries and veins to become larger and leak fluid into the surrounding tissue. Your blood had a bigger space to fill and so your body struggled to keep your blood pressure at a normal level

• Your heart tried to help by beating faster

• You might have felt breathless and /or were breathing very quickly

• Your skin might have been cold and pale, have had an unusual colour or rash

• Your skin might have been hot and flushed.

Depending on where the infection started, you would also have had other symptoms, for example, if you had pneumonia, you would probably have had a bad cough as well. As the sepsis progressed, your blood pressure might have become very low and this would mean that:

• Your organs will not have got enough blood and oxygen. This will have damaged the cells in the organs causing them to fail.  The kidneys, lungs, bring and heart are particularly at risk from this

• You won’t have needed to urinate (pee / mimi) as much as you normally do

• You may have found it very difficult to breathe

• Your skin may have darkened in patches and begun to blister

• You may have become very confused and you might have become unconscious

• You may have swollen up with fluid, which would have made you much bigger than your normal size and meant you looked very different. This might have been frightening for you and your family / whanau to see. This swelling happens because your blood vessels become leaky and fluid goes into the wrong places, and can leak out of your skin.