Microbiologist grateful for donors after severe bacterial infection

When Warren McBurney started feeling unwell on Good Friday in 2011, he couldn’t possibly have predicted the months that would follow. It was thanks to dedicated medical staff at Dunedin Hospital and 25 generous blood donors that Warren is here to tell his story.

As a lecturer in medical microbiology at the University of Otago, Warren felt he was qualified to diagnose himself with what he suspected was viral gastroenteritis, or stomach flu. But as he discovered 36 hours later, his condition was far worse than he could have imagined.

“I don’t actually know what happened,” says Warren, “I developed nausea and vomiting, had diarrhoea, and wasn’t getting better. Things progressed pretty rapidly. After 36 hours when I was still feeling nauseous and had a temperature of 41 degrees my wife called an ambulance. I was feeling delirious, totally out of it and wasn’t making any sense. I had very low blood pressure, a really low heart rate, but a fast respiratory rate – in hindsight all the classic signs of septic shock.”

Warren had developed sepsis, a severe and potentially fatal condition that occurs from an infection in the blood. Causes can include bacterial, fungal or viral infections and even something as simple as a skin infection could result in this life-threatening illness.  Now nearly ten years later Warren still doesn’t know exactly how he contracted it. All he knows is he was lucky to survive.

 “I woke up in intensive care about ten days after I started feeling unwell,” Warren recalls, “A whole week and a half had passed and I had no recollection of any of it. My family were so concerned, it was a terrible time for them as doctors didn’t expect me to survive.

“They try to treat the symptoms, to give your body a chance to recover through support. All my organs were failing, my blood vessels had become leaky, leading to the blood leaving my circulation and pooling in my tissues, so there was no blood flowing to my organs and they weren’t being oxygenated. I was dying,” says Warren. “That’s where all the blood and blood products come in, everything had to be replaced to support my individual organs.”

When he was admitted to the intensive care unit at Dunedin Hospital, Warren was put on a dialysis to help his struggling kidneys as his blood coagulated. Over the six weeks he spent in ICU, he required 25 units of blood, platelets and plasma, and these donations from 25 generous donors kept him alive.

Sepsis is a leading cause of death among hospitalised patients in the developed world. In New Zealand, sepsis kills more people than lung, breast and bowel cancer combined, and approximately half of all patients admitted to intensive care with severe sepsis die as a result of the condition.

 “As a microbiologist I feel like I missed out on an amazing learning experience by not remembering anything, but for a long time my brain wouldn’t work very well, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. It took me well over a year to be able to sit down and read a book. It makes me realise how severe the infection was and how things could have been much worse”.

Warren knew before his experience how important blood donations were, and not just due to his background in medical laboratory science. Warren was a blood donor for over ten years, donating his whole blood a total of 23 times. His wife Tracey has donated her blood for even longer than Warren, and two of his children are now registered blood donors as well, all with extra gratitude to fellow donors.

 “I am so fantastically grateful for those who donate blood, plasma and platelets. Without them I may not be here today. Donors helped to save my life”.

To find out more about how you can donate blood or plasma, click here, or call 0800 GIVE BLOOD