Page 4 - Christiana Care Focus February 2019

Christiana Care VNA caregivers support recovery with Excellence and Love.
Life is good
Bill Hodgman loves the active life — to take strolls on the beach and peaceful walks in the park,
to travel and snorkel. He often wakes before 6 a.m. to greet the day. He keeps a list of things he’d like to
Hdo in the future.
is positive approach to life
today is far removed from the way he had lived in the several years after an attack of sepsis led to multiple
limb amputations. Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening illness caused by the body’s overactive response to an infection.
In mid-April 2014, Hodgman, who has type 2 diabetes, was with his mother and sister when the nearly fatal experience began with flu-like symptoms.
“It was obvious he wasn’t feeling well,” said his mother, Jean. “He complained of pain in his abdominal area and his back. He just didn’t look good.”
His sister, Amy Morris, said she checked his blood glucose and gave him food and insulin to see if that would help him feel better. But after his condition rapidly deteriorated overnight, he needed to go to the emergency department.
A grim prognosis
After the ambulance reached Christiana Care’s Wilmington Hospital, Hodgman’s heart stopped for three minutes, he said. After resuscitating him, the medical team administered vasopressors for severely low blood pressure. For four days, Hodgman was in a coma with a grim prognosis.
On that Easter Sunday, Hodgman’s
sons, Eric and Troy, and his friend, Paul McCorkle, thought of playing some music in the hospital room to gauge any effect on his condition. Troy placed a cell phone on Hodgman’s shoulder and put on “The Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin. Incredibly, Hodgman began nodding his head, his eyes fluttered open, he mouthed the lyrics and even played air guitar, his family recalled.
There was joy when he came out of the coma, but the illness also took an enormous toll on his body. Sepsis can cause blockages in the blood vessels, depriving body tissue of oxygen. The resulting damage to his
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