Doctors said my chesty cough was ‘flu’ – but it was killer sepsis that left me fighting for my life in intensive care and temporarily disabled

A council worker was left temporarily disabled after doctors mistook life-threatening sepsis for flu. 

Denise Devoto, 52, developed what she believed to be a terrible cough and cold in December 2022, and suffered coughing fits that made her feel like she’d ‘broken a rib’.

Despite feeling so weak she couldn’t stand up and suffering extreme chest pain, two doctors concluded she had a common flu infection, and advised her to go home to recover.

Yet, within days her lips began to turn blue and she struggled to breathe. 

Her husband, Mark, 62, rang an ambulance, and paramedics rushed her to hospital where doctors discovered she was suffering sepsis — when the body over-reacts to infection.

Her condition quickly spiralled, resulting in an admission to intensive care where she spent five days fighting for her life. 

Thankfully Ms Devoto, from Sheffield, survived, but faced an uphill journey of recovery, including rehab on a thoracic ward, in order to learn how to breathe and walk unaided. 

She felt unable to leave the house for four months for fear of contracting another infection. 

It wasn’t until a year later that she was able to make it up and down the stairs without help.

 ‘My recovery was really hard,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t walk up the stairs and I slept 18 hours per day.

‘I also struggled with my mental health and after three months, I even started losing my hair.

‘I couldn’t have gotten through it without Mark and our cats.’

Ms Devoto’s ordeal began on 9th December 2022, when she woke up in the night with a sharp pain in her ribcage.

It took five weeks of hospital treatment before Ms Devoto was discharged and tasked with learning to use her lungs independently again.

She describes the agony of sepsis as feeling as though she was ‘going to die’. Pictured here with husband Mark

She thought little of it, but began to feel unwell as the days went by. Within a week she’d developed a full-blown cough and cold. 

Two nights later, she suffered an awful coughing fit that made her feel like she’d broken a rib.

‘The next morning, my husband took me to the walk-in centre where a doctor thought I had a blood clot on my lungs.

‘I was told to go to hospital, where the pain only worsened. I couldn’t even stand.’

In A&E at Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, a doctor diagnosed her with flu, and she was sent home with pain relief.

But the next day, she started vomiting phlegm. 

‘I thought I’d developed a chest infection as well, so I rang my GP, who prescribed me with antibiotics.

Ms Devoto has suffered many low moments since her ordeal began, but credits her husband and her cats for getting her through.

 ‘But by that afternoon, I started to feel breathless, my lips had turned blue, and I was having really bad diarrhoea.

‘I rang my GP again and they told me to call an ambulance.’ Paramedics arrived within ten minutes and took Ms Devoto to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, where she was put on oxygen before being transferred to the Infectious Diseases Unit.

There, she was given antibiotics, fluids and pain relief.

Doctors explained that the ‘flu’ was in fact the deadly lung infection pneumonia, which had triggered sepsis.

Her organs had been struggling to get enough oxygen.

‘I didn’t understand the severity of what that meant,’ said Ms Devoto. ‘But I remember feeling like I was going to die.’

By Christmas, she was feeling a little better.

But it wasn’t long before she went downhill again. Her breathing worsened along with the pain in her lungs and ribs.

The following week, CT scan and X-ray showed a large bilateral pleural effusion — a collection of fluid — in her lungs.

‘That was why I was struggling to breathe,’ she said. ‘I’d also fractured three ribs from coughing and had a partially collapsed right lung.’

She transferred back to Northern General Hospital, where she had a drain fitted to remove four litres of liquid from her lungs.

But the infection still hadn’t cleared, so she was sent for another CT scan which showed that the infected fluid had solidified in her lungs.

Four days later, Ms Devoto underwent an operation in which surgeons collapsed her lung in order to remove the infection.

Ms Devoto now wants to dedicate time to helping those affected by sepsis, and volunteers for the UK Sepsis Trust. 

Afterwards, she had a blood transfusion and was intubated for a day to help her body recover. She spent six days in intensive care, after which she had to ‘relearn’ how to use her lungs. 

In January 2023, she was finally discharged. However, it wasn’t until April that she felt well enough to leave the house. 

In the 18-months since her illness, Ms Devoto has endeavoured to help others who have been through a similar experience by volunteering as a peer support worker with the UK Sepsis Trust. 

‘I now have a completely different outlook on life,’ she said. ‘I’m a lot better at listening to my body and I’ve learnt to not sweat the small stuff.

‘I count myself lucky.’