Rachel was taken down for surgery, but, after just a few hours, doctors told them that she would also have to lose her left arm. The family struggled to process all this awful information; they were told to think on it overnight. However, the next morning, the doctors told them that the decision was no longer theirs to make. They said that Rachel would also lose part of her face, that her brain function was in doubt, and that her future would involve years of surgeries and skin grafts. And so the decision was made to let her slip gently away.

Bernie and Steve are members of the cross-party group on sepsis and have given me full permission to tell this story. I do not just tell a deeply sad tale, but it's to try and make everyone realise the awful, vicious reality that is sepsis, and because Rachel's story highlights the many gaps we have in understanding what sepsis is and how important it is that it's treated fast and effectively with industrial levels of antibiotics.

I've given this debate the title of 'Sepsis—The Chameleon' because sepsis can hide behind other illnesses—sepsis, a life-threatening illness caused by your body's response to an infection such as a urinary infection or pneumonia, or a cut on your body, or an implant of some sort. The list is lengthy and often only the primary problem is perceived. Sepsis develops when the chemicals the immune system releases into the bloodstream to fight the infection cause inflammation throughout the entire body instead. The inflammation is highly variable in severity and duration, and, on a superficial assessment, is often mistaken for flu.

I had sepsis. I was caught very early on by the nurse manager at Withybush hospital who refused to let the locum A&E consultant send me home. The consultant saw a woman with pneumonia; the nurse manager saw a leg so inflamed I couldn't put it to the ground, saw the scars of the knee replacements, saw the rigors, heard the pain and saved my life because I was kept in and immediately put on antibiotics. Even so, I still spent eight or nine weeks in three different hospitals, and don't recall much of what happened.

Rachel went to A&E, was sent home and told to dose herself with paracetamol, but those 12 hours made the difference between life and death, because Rachel went into septic shock. I'm here and she is not because I got those life-saving drugs. I had sepsis, but I didn't go into septic shock.

Septic shock is a life-threatening condition that can occur as a complication of sepsis. Your blood pressure drops to dangerously low levels. The amount of oxygen and blood that reaches the body organs is severely reduced, and that, in turn, stops your organs from working properly. Both sepsis and septic shock are basically when your body's reaction to an infection starts to damage the body's own internal tissues and organs; your body becomes overwhelmed, you're fighting on every front, and, if you pull through, the likelihood of you having some kind of residual damage is high.

They used to say that a third of those who have sepsis will die, a third survive with life-changing conditions, and a third are fine. But research now shows that even that is not so. There's a much greater chance of psychological morbidity, which is directly attributed to an onslaught of sepsis. 

I clearly remember sitting at my kitchen table a few days after I left hospital, and, as it happened, a national newspaper was carrying a sepsis story and talking about the third, the third and the third, and my guilty relief at realising I was in the lucky third. But that was before I understood, as I do now, the debilitating effect sepsis has had on my health—from my crumbling bones, my dodgy blood, through to the loss of my mental sharpness. I know that some days I operate in a fog. I know that some days I'm gripped with a sorrow and a sense of loss I cannot explain nor describe. I was as tough as old boots and bloody clever, and with a first-class memory. I'm not that person any more, and I can't get back to her; sepsis took her away.

John also appeared to have relatively few physical symptoms of sepsis, but he talks of the difficult time he had in hospital when he was transferred from the intensive care unit. He says the majority of the medical staff were not aware of the journey of a sepsis survivor, from his inability to remember what had happened to him to his anxiety, lack of appetite and inability to construct sentences. Now, he's been left with confusion and speech difficulties. He can't sleep and struggles to hear. That confident man has to rely on his wife to help him through life, and he would argue with conviction that no-one escapes sepsis scot-free.