Please give my child antibiotics when you think a child has a stomach virus, but you’re not sure. Please, please, give my child antibiotics when you see the symptoms of sepsis and you’re thinking, maybe? Just do the blood cultures and prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics for 48 hours so they will live! 

You see doctor, our son kept telling doctors that he was in pain, that he didn’t have a stomach flu because his leg hurt so bad and he felt weak, and that his skin looked different “it’s not my stomach that’s bothering me doctor,” he said “it’s the pain in my leg” and after he died we discovered that the awful pain in his leg was directly related to sepsis because the blood supply to the extremities was failing. An antibiotic would have saved his life.

Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of  the C.D.C, and a major advocate for antibiotic stewardship once said: “Antibiotics are nothing short of miracle drugs. Prompt treatment of infections that lead to sepsis saves lives every day in U.S. Hospitals.”

Antibiotic stewardship is about encouraging hospitals and medical facilities to improve their practices to ensure that the threat of antibiotic resistance and untreated infections is dealt with in an increasingly urgent manner. I agree and I understand.  There are terrible complications from antibiotic overuse but, there are terrible consequences from not prescribing antibiotics when a doctor suspects sepsis. The consequence can mean death.

Antibiotic stewardship means remembering that antibiotics  must be used to save the lives of sepsis patients.

Rory’s mom

…so there are not more Rory’s