A mother-of-two who attended the emergency room with a sore throat ended up with such serious complications that all four of her limbs had to be amputated to save her life.
Kristen Fox, 42, from Poland, Ohio, went to the emergency room with a sore throat, and was sent home with medication when tests revealed she had the flu.
However, her condition continued to worsen at home and she was forced to return to the hospital after becoming so unwell she couldn't even get off her couch.
It was then discovered that Fox, who worked as a high school assistant principal, had sepsis, which can be life-threatening.
Sepsis is a serious condition where the body responds improperly to an infection, and the infection-fighting processes turn on the body, causing the organs to function poorly, according to the Mayo Clinic.
If not caught early, sepsis - which affects 1.7 million adults in the US per year - can progress to septic shock and damage organs, even causing death if left untreated.
Fox's condition was so severe that she had to be placed in a medically induced coma to allow her body to rest and heal, and have her arms and legs amputated in order to save her life.
She was admitted to the hospital in March 2020, shortly before the first Covid lockdown was implemented in Ohio.
Fox was able to be slowly woken up from the induced coma after a week and despite the difficulties of life as a newly quadruple amputee, she admitted she felt "lucky" it was her limbs she lost rather than her life.
The mom-of-two told Fox News: "Sometimes I catch myself complaining, but then I remind myself that my kids could have been mourning my death. They're 12 and 10 now, and I can't imagine them living without me.
"People send me stuff and stop me in the store and say, 'I pray for you all the time'. Those are the people who got us through."
She was able to be discharged from the hospital a few weeks after she woke up and continued her recovery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Rehabilitation Institute, where she had three hours of physical therapy daily for six weeks in order to learn how to use her limbs again.
Seven months after she was first hospitalized, Fox was fitted with prosthetic arms and legs in October 2020.
She revealed that she regularly uses the ones for her legs but finds it "easier" to do things without her arm prosthetics, and even returned to work a year after she was hospitalized.
Fox returned to her post as assistant principal at Campbell High School, telling Fox News: "I mentally had to go back to work.
"I'm a very 'go, go go' type of person, and if I went out on disability, I was not going to have a good quality of life."
She revealed that her disability has also helped educate the children she works with, adding: "I had a lot of young eyes watching me, and I knew there were so many kids who would learn so much from my reaction to this.
"It's taught them about respecting differences and treating everyone fairly, regardless of their ability. And it's taught them how they should overcome their own barriers and tough moments.
"As an educator, I didn't want my students to think I took the easy way out."
Her local community also rallied around to help her pay for costs she incurred despite her insurance paying for some of her medical costs, such as the expenses she had to pay for renovations on her home to make it more accessible by putting on fundraisers for her benefit.
