Dental Staph & Streptococcus biofilms after sepsis
Hey everyone in the group,
I've been dealing with this nightmare for over a year now and I'm hoping someone here can relate or give me some advice. Back in July 2024, I had a bad dental infection that turned into severe sepsis—cultures showed staph and strep. It hit my kidneys hard with bleeding and AKI, and within a week I was on dialysis. By day 8, I had respiratory failure and got life-flighted to ICU. They diagnosed me with stuff like acute respiratory failure with hypoxia, severe sepsis, dependence on dialysis (with notes about noncompliance, which I dispute), relapsing polychondritis (which I never had symptoms for like ear or nose cartilage issues), chronic pansinusitis, periapical abscesses, iron deficiency anemia, UTI, cellulitis in my mouth and orbit, lactic acidemia, hypokalemia, hyponatremia, and more. But polychondritis? That seems way off—I think it was a misdiagnosis.
They gave me amoxicillin-clavulanate at first, and I felt like I was dying worse—fever spiked, felt allergic—so it's been on my record as an allergy ever since, and they've avoided those meds. But what if it was a Herx reaction, where killing the bugs makes you feel sicker temporarily? I've had teeth removed (five) and sinus surgery with cultures from the nose abscess, but symptoms keep coming back: left back/kidney pain after dialysis. headaches, low fevers (97.8-100.8), fatigue, fluid in lungs/belly, enlarged liver/spleen, and random issues every couple weeks.
Is it possible the dialysis overshadowed the infection, leading to misdiagnosis as autoimmune (like AAV)? And could biofilms in my catheter be hiding the bugs, causing recurrences? Or the original infection jarring through my body during dialysis? Has anyone gone through this—sepsis from teeth/sinuses mimicking vasculitis, mislabeled allergy that's actually Herx, organ damage (kidneys thinned, lungs hazy, fatty liver)? How did you get proper treatment? Feeling like doctors think I'm a hypochondriac now. Any thoughts or similar stories? Thanks for reading—need hope!
Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Infectious Diseases Support Group.
Hello Walker - I am new to this Mayo thingy and feel terrible no one has responded for you. I belong to 3 other groups on FB that are very active and many can offer ideas that may explain some of the mouth/sinus issues. I am a year and 1/2 in post recovery of sever septic cardio shock and lived! Kidneys and breathing stopped. I had a TBJ from the infection of strep A and 2 other bacterium - 6 weeks coma and went into heart failure. My left arm and top of my hand got gangrene that has about 40% usage to date. Everything came back but we are still finding damage to date. Sorry to ramble. There is no short cut to say everything that happened. I am blessed to be here! My Infectious Disease doc save my arm/hand and found that evil flesh eating bacteria. I am just learning about biofilms, so forgive me about not knowing more.
I am glad you survived the event and hope your recovery is smooth. Take your time with it. If you can talk to an Infectious Disease doc, do it. Take Care and God Bless
Life After Sepsis & Learning About PSS
https://www.facebook.com/groups/501274050717077
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3002904529839405/?multi_permalinks=3673297859466732%2C3672364379560080%2C3674231566040028¬if_id=1760804524449866¬if_t=group_activity&ref=notif