Speaker 1: I literally cannot stand up. At that point, I even
Speaker 1: had to ask my parents, like to move my limbs
Speaker 1: for me, Like, oh, can you move my arm? I'm
Speaker 1: not comfortable, can you move my leg? I knew something
Speaker 1: was really not right, so I started to panic. He
Speaker 1: was running extremely high fevers, which scared me to death
Speaker 1: because you know, I just kept thinking like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: even if he survives, his brain is going to be fried.
Speaker 1: So your lungs don't work anymore, your blood pressure drops,
Speaker 1: your kidneys wind up failing. The risk of dying goes
Speaker 1: up by about one for every five minutes that passes.
Speaker 1: How terrifying would it be to fight an unknown enemy,
Speaker 1: one you didn't recognize and didn't see coming. What if
Speaker 1: that enemy was coming from within a disease even doctors
Speaker 1: couldn't identify. Nearly half of all Americans suffer from some
Speaker 1: chronic illness, and many struggle for an accurate diagnosis. These
Speaker 1: are their stories. I'm Lauren Bright, the checko, and this
Speaker 1: is symptomatic. Zach Dobek was a self described relatively normal
Speaker 1: eleven year old kid. His favorite food was pizza, He
Speaker 1: loved sports, he loved being outside, but above everything, he
Speaker 1: loved Legos. Yeah, I was a big Lego kid. I
Speaker 1: would say I was never a huge video game guy,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. But we had a whole Lego set
Speaker 1: in our basement. He loved to fish and be in
Speaker 1: the water and just do all the things that kids
Speaker 1: love to do. That was Zack's mother, Martie Doeback, who
Speaker 1: knew she had a rather exceptional kid on her hands
Speaker 1: from a young age. I literally can't help but like
Speaker 1: break into a huge smile because he is just a
Speaker 1: really unique kid who just sort of connects with everybody
Speaker 1: around him. And I think about how lucky we are
Speaker 1: because he is such a special human being. So he
Speaker 1: was special before he got sick, and maybe he's even
Speaker 1: extra special now, a special kid that was forever shaped
Speaker 1: by a life threatening battle with a mystery medical condition.
Speaker 1: Marnie is a family physician who would be faced with
Speaker 1: an emergency even she didn't see coming. Was there anything
Speaker 1: that could have prepared you for the roller coaster you're
Speaker 1: about to go on? No? Simply no, there was nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, I think as a mom, probably all moms
Speaker 1: worry about things that might happen to their children. You know,
Speaker 1: is my child going to have cancer? As my child
Speaker 1: is going to become a diabetic, as my child is
Speaker 1: going to get into a car accident, And these were
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that, like over the years, had
Speaker 1: you know, maybe run through my mind, but what ended
Speaker 1: up happening was so far from anything I could have
Speaker 1: even imagined. The first signs of something being wrong with
Speaker 1: Zach started to show up while she was cheering on
Speaker 1: her son during a little league baseball doubleheader. I remember
Speaker 1: these these moments in exquisite detail. So I know that
Speaker 1: it was June four of two thousand fourteen, and that
Speaker 1: was a Wednesday, and my husband and I were at
Speaker 1: the game, and he had played, you know, particularly well,
Speaker 1: I think at those games, and so when the games ended,
Speaker 1: you know, I went over to him to congratulate him
Speaker 1: or whatever when they're eleven years old. I put my
Speaker 1: arm around him and I said good job, and he
Speaker 1: started to cry. I told my mom and my dad
Speaker 1: was coaching me at the time. I told them that
Speaker 1: my knee was kind of hurting and I had like
Speaker 1: a really bad headache. And now, being the athletic kid
Speaker 1: that I was, I was busy all day and I
Speaker 1: had a double header baseball game, so two in a
Speaker 1: row so when I told them of that pain, they
Speaker 1: were kind of like, Okay, you just had a lot
Speaker 1: of physical activity. And being the fine parent that I am,
Speaker 1: my first thought was like, he's hungry, he didn't need
Speaker 1: he played too long games, it's hot. So I really
Speaker 1: didn't think too much of it either, especially knowing my
Speaker 1: mom as a doctor, I kind of knew she would
Speaker 1: take care of everything. I knew I could always trust her,
Speaker 1: and the fact that she's like, all right, let's get
Speaker 1: get some dinner, let's drink some water, and see how
Speaker 1: you are tomorrow. Um, I really wasn't thinking too much
Speaker 1: of it at the time. The Dopebac family went home
Speaker 1: for dinner, but Zach didn't eat at all, which was strange.
Speaker 1: Zach loved food and it was odd for Martie to
Speaker 1: see him pass up a meal. His curious nee pain
Speaker 1: lingered into the next day, so he woke up in
Speaker 1: the morning and he said that his knee was still
Speaker 1: hurting him. And you know, I guess those were the
Speaker 1: first glimmers where I was sort of like, mm hmm,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit weird. So I decided to keep
Speaker 1: him home from school, and I gave him some advil
Speaker 1: or something like that that you would give any kid
Speaker 1: for pain, and the advil kicked in after a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a great kid, and he came up
Speaker 1: to me and he said, do you know what, Mom,
Speaker 1: I feel better. I think I'm okay to go to school.
Speaker 1: So I said okay. Zack didn't last long after she
Speaker 1: dropped him off. The pain was quickly catching up to him,
Speaker 1: causing him to start lumping. The school nurse was actually
Speaker 1: the one to realize something wasn't quite right. She called
Speaker 1: me and she said that Zack had come to her
Speaker 1: complaining of knee pain, that he didn't have a fever,
Speaker 1: but he was limping, and then what she said, um,
Speaker 1: and I really remember, like she said these exact words.
Speaker 1: He just doesn't look right. And I remember saying to her, like,
Speaker 1: I know, you know, something seems really odd. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll come pick him up. And I brought him home
Speaker 1: and I, you know, I got him set on the
Speaker 1: couch and I you know, I raised his leg up
Speaker 1: on something and I gave him some ice, and I
Speaker 1: gave him some more advil. And when I went back
Speaker 1: to check on him after some time, you know, I
Speaker 1: felt his head and he felt warm, and I took
Speaker 1: his temperature and he was running a fever. And I
Speaker 1: remember also thinking, that's weird lingering me pain and now
Speaker 1: a fever. Marty thought it might just have been that
Speaker 1: getting some sort of virus, which would explain the pain
Speaker 1: and fever. But things started to get worse quickly. The
Speaker 1: next day, she was barely at work an hour before
Speaker 1: getting a phone call from their all pair, and she
Speaker 1: called me at work to tell me that she was
Speaker 1: downstairs in our kitchen and she could hear him crying
Speaker 1: up in his room. And again, you know, there are
Speaker 1: all these moments. That was another moment where I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: like bring him to my office. So I'm a family doctor,
Speaker 1: and I had asked one of my associates if she
Speaker 1: would take a look at him for me. So she
Speaker 1: came into the room and by that point he was
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable, like he couldn't sit still because of the pain.
Speaker 1: But when you looked at his knee where he was
Speaker 1: complaining of pain, it wasn't read, it wasn't swollen. She
Speaker 1: was able to move it, and so she sort of
Speaker 1: examined him and looked at me and like almost like
Speaker 1: shrugged at me like, I don't know, it's weird. She
Speaker 1: ordered him some pain medicine. She thought maybe it was
Speaker 1: a weird case of lime disease. So he got some
Speaker 1: blood work and she prescribed an appropriate antibiotic for lime
Speaker 1: disease that maybe we could just get started on. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, the pain, the fevers, both of these are
Speaker 1: adding up to look a lot like I'm disease. That
Speaker 1: was until the blood work came back with some alarming results,
Speaker 1: results that made Martie start to get really nervous. Within
Speaker 1: a couple of hours, we got a call from the
Speaker 1: lab with a critical result. And one of the tests
Speaker 1: that had been run is called a c reactive protein
Speaker 1: or a c RP, So a c RP is it's
Speaker 1: a very non specific test, but it's a test that
Speaker 1: sort of measures like a level of inflammation in the body,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't tell you what's causing the inflammation. But
Speaker 1: his came back extraordinarily high, to a point where I
Speaker 1: knew something Everyone knew, not just me, but I knew
Speaker 1: something was really not right. So I started to panic.
Speaker 1: That was the moment I was gonna say, take me
Speaker 1: to that moment, because you're wearing your mother hat and
Speaker 1: you're wearing your doctor hat. And usually when as a
Speaker 1: parent you are told of a result like this, you
Speaker 1: have to educate yourself. But you instantly that must have
Speaker 1: been like ice cold feared on your back. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was. I knew something was very wrong, but
Speaker 1: you kind of start spiraling into like that half doctor,
Speaker 1: half mom, like you don't want to overreact, you don't
Speaker 1: want to underreact, you know. I always say like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be that patient that was like difficult
Speaker 1: or an over worrior, and you know, trying to balance
Speaker 1: all of it was not easy, but but I was.
Speaker 1: I was nervous at that point. It's becoming apparent there's
Speaker 1: a lot more going on here than just lyme disease.
Speaker 1: But what Martie is starting to fear the worst because
Speaker 1: she knows how telling those test results, maybe being a
Speaker 1: doctor herself. Looking to where it all started with his knee,
Speaker 1: Martie takes him to an orthopedis to see if they
Speaker 1: can source any answers. And Zach was laying there on
Speaker 1: the table and he looked ill, like he did not
Speaker 1: look well. But he had also already taken like Thailand
Speaker 1: all with codine at that point, so it was a
Speaker 1: little bit hard to tell what was what if he
Speaker 1: was drowsy from that, but he did not look well.
Speaker 1: So the doctor pulled the fluid out of the joint
Speaker 1: and he said, to me, the fluid doesn't look normal,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't look like a bacterial infection either. He
Speaker 1: thought it was what we call like a viral synovitis,
Speaker 1: like what I had kind of originally thought that he
Speaker 1: had some kind of virus that was causing the lining
Speaker 1: of his joint to be inflamed, and the abnormal fluid
Speaker 1: was because of all the inflammation in there. The fluid
Speaker 1: was going to all go out to the lab and
Speaker 1: you know, so that was it. So I sort of
Speaker 1: like stood there. I remember feeling like almost dumbfound like okay,
Speaker 1: but my mother, doctor censors were going off tremendously. I
Speaker 1: knew that that wasn't it. But what do you do?
Speaker 1: What stopped you in that moment? That must have been
Speaker 1: so difficult for you to navigate because I felt like
Speaker 1: I had done everything, you know, I I took him
Speaker 1: to a primary care doctor. He was examined, he had
Speaker 1: blood work, he had an X ray, he saw an orthopedies,
Speaker 1: He took the fluid out of the knee, like I
Speaker 1: I didn't know what else to do. Like I felt
Speaker 1: like even if I took him to the hospital, they
Speaker 1: were just going to send him home because everything had
Speaker 1: been done. But I just I knew something was not right.
Speaker 1: She went to her younger son's baseball game the next day,
Speaker 1: but Marnie was buzzing with nervous energy. Having left Zack
Speaker 1: with his older brother, the family came home to find
Speaker 1: Zack's leg had ballooned while they were away. And I
Speaker 1: remember I just had to go pee and I literally
Speaker 1: couldnot get up to walk to the bathroom. So my
Speaker 1: older brother I got in his back. He gave me
Speaker 1: a piggyback ride to the bathroom. I could like barely
Speaker 1: even stand up at that point. The fact that I
Speaker 1: couldn't even walk to the bathroom is like mind boggling.
Speaker 1: And by the time we got home, we noticed that
Speaker 1: like his thigh looked swollen and um. As that date progressed,
Speaker 1: he just, I mean it got it started to get ridiculous.
Speaker 1: He started to have extreme pain everywhere, like all over
Speaker 1: his body. I even had to ask my parents, like
Speaker 1: to move my limbs for me. I would ask them like, oh,
Speaker 1: can you move my arm. I'm not comfortable. Can you
Speaker 1: move my leg? My husband had to pick him up,
Speaker 1: carry him up the stairs to put him in bed.
Speaker 1: And my husband tried to put him in his bed,
Speaker 1: and Zach said to him, can I go in your bed?
Speaker 1: It's more comfortable, So my husband put him in our bed,
Speaker 1: which you know, in retrospect, thank god, three days have
Speaker 1: passed since the onset of symptoms fever, body aches, swelling,
Speaker 1: and so much pain that Zack couldn't move on his own.
Speaker 1: The antibiotics and medicine so far hadn't helped things change course.
Speaker 1: All the specialists and even Marnie were stumped as to
Speaker 1: what was really happening to him. Things kept spiraling in
Speaker 1: the wrong direction, and Marnie slept in the bed with
Speaker 1: Zach to keep a close eye on him. You can
Speaker 1: ask my mom. We didn't sleep that much to that night,
Speaker 1: especially her. She was worried sick. It was just hours
Speaker 1: of him like tossing and turning. He kept asking for
Speaker 1: water over and over, and you know, he would doze
Speaker 1: for a few minutes and and finally like somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, maybe it was three o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. He asked for the water and I
Speaker 1: said sure, sure, I'll get it for you. And then
Speaker 1: he looked me straight in the face and he said,
Speaker 1: is someone going to fly it to our house? And
Speaker 1: I looked at him and I said what. And I
Speaker 1: kind of remember being like in a dream stay almost tired,
Speaker 1: So I said it and I told her and I
Speaker 1: was like no, no, no, I'm just tired. I'm just
Speaker 1: dreaming like it's okay. Uh. And then I asked again,
Speaker 1: like five seconds later, are they going to fly it
Speaker 1: over to me? And he again said is someone going
Speaker 1: to fly it to our house? So he was like
Speaker 1: starting to like hallucinate. I don't know, but I started
Speaker 1: to cry and she was like, that's it. We're going
Speaker 1: to the hospital. And I actually sat there and I
Speaker 1: was like no, I'm so tired, Like can we please
Speaker 1: go in the morning. Can we please go in the morning?
Speaker 1: And she was like Nope, absolutely not, We're going right now.
Speaker 1: And I think about that and like if we had
Speaker 1: said yes, Like the honest to god truth is that
Speaker 1: I think he would have died in that bed that night.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with Symptomatic, a medical Mystery podcast.
Speaker 1: Now back to Symptomatic a medical mystery podcast, Zach Dobec
Speaker 1: was fighting for his life against a mysterious illness that
Speaker 1: now had him heading to the e R. He still
Speaker 1: had an extremely high fever, was in so much pain
Speaker 1: that he couldn't move on his own, and now he
Speaker 1: was starting to become delusional. He wasn't himself, and that
Speaker 1: terrified his mother, Marny, And we got him into the
Speaker 1: emergency room and into like the triage nurse, and the
Speaker 1: triage nurse took one look at him and she said,
Speaker 1: he doesn't look good. And I thought, no kidding, lady.
Speaker 1: I mean we were. We were deliriously tired, so I
Speaker 1: think I was dozing on and off. But they did
Speaker 1: a chest X ray and blood work and he was
Speaker 1: on oxygen, and you know, we were there for a
Speaker 1: few hours, and you know, sometime early in the morning
Speaker 1: the results started to come in and he was in
Speaker 1: multi system failure, you know, liver failure, kidney failure, He
Speaker 1: had fluid in his lungs. I mean, he was a wreck.
Speaker 1: Just four days after first showing symptoms, Zach is now
Speaker 1: experiencing multi system failure, with him being transferred to the
Speaker 1: i c U. Every passing hours critical defining the cause
Speaker 1: of his symptoms and most importantly, the right treatment. It
Speaker 1: is literally to the point of life or death, as
Speaker 1: the doctor's race defined an answer, but that doesn't stop
Speaker 1: Martie from trying to find a way to comfort her son,
Speaker 1: as his mother, in these moments, he looked. I mean,
Speaker 1: in medicine, like when you see a really sick person,
Speaker 1: a lot of times you say that they looked toxic.
Speaker 1: He looked toxic. I actually took pictures of him in
Speaker 1: the ambulance. I can't remember why. I think I was
Speaker 1: like talking, I don't even know. I think we were
Speaker 1: trying to like make him laugh or cheer him up,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't remember why, but I took some
Speaker 1: pictures of him. And when you look at the pictures,
Speaker 1: I mean, he looks gray. He looks horrible and gray
Speaker 1: and very ill. He was kind of just laying there still. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in a while, but I mean,
Speaker 1: with the fever as high as it was, um, I
Speaker 1: was pretty much just like a blank slate. My body
Speaker 1: was literally just like a sack of potatoes, just almost lifeless,
Speaker 1: and even in my eyes you could kind of see
Speaker 1: that I wasn't there that's so frightening because it's is
Speaker 1: like your body had lost all feeling except for pain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not the pain you would think of, like
Speaker 1: ow I stubbed my toe. It was like pain, like
Speaker 1: shut down, like something really bad was going to happen.
Speaker 1: Placed in the care of the pediatric I see you,
Speaker 1: Zach and Marney were repeatedly given the same conclusions as before,
Speaker 1: some sort of tickborn illness in the family of lyme disease.
Speaker 1: Zach was already on oxygen and using an ivy for hydration.
Speaker 1: He was then put on full spectrum antibiotics and hopes
Speaker 1: that any of them would help combat the illness that
Speaker 1: was causing his body to start to shut down. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't enough. The doctors needed to take more drastic
Speaker 1: measures to try to save his life. And so the
Speaker 1: I c U doctor came in and he said, let's
Speaker 1: go have a meeting in my office. And he basically said, like,
Speaker 1: we think he needs to go on a ventilator or
Speaker 1: a respirator. And I mean, what are we going to argue?
Speaker 1: You know, of course, of course if that's what he needs,
Speaker 1: and so you know, we we obviously said okay, and
Speaker 1: we um they asked us to step out, and we
Speaker 1: were out of out of the I c U. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was twenty minutes or what. We
Speaker 1: were waiting, and you know, they call you back in.
Speaker 1: Trying to control my tears, but they call you back in,
Speaker 1: and your kid, who was playing baseball, you know what,
Speaker 1: three or five days earlier, was laying there on a
Speaker 1: ventilator with like tubes and like and you know they're
Speaker 1: un they put them out, so he's, you know, unconscious,
Speaker 1: un a ventilator and I just remember thinking, like, what
Speaker 1: is happening here? Can I ask a question? So? Was
Speaker 1: it technically? Did they put him in a medically induced comma? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they did. Zach was now in a
Speaker 1: medically induced comma to protect his brain from swelling and
Speaker 1: to keep him alive. While the doctors scrambled to figure
Speaker 1: out the root of his symptoms, nothing seemed to be working,
Speaker 1: and his fever just kept persisting through all the attempts
Speaker 1: to bring it down to the point where they were
Speaker 1: putting him on like cooling blankets. You know. I just
Speaker 1: kept thinking, like, oh my god, even if he survives,
Speaker 1: his brain is going to be fried. His lung collapsed
Speaker 1: at one point, so he needed a chess tube to
Speaker 1: re expand his lung. There was just complication after complication.
Speaker 1: When I was in the coma. Again this is second hand,
Speaker 1: but they said I could hear, and my dad would um.
Speaker 1: He would tell me every day when I was in
Speaker 1: the coma. He would say, wake up, Zack. We got
Speaker 1: fish to catch. And that was his way of saying, like,
Speaker 1: you gotta get up. You're not done yet. We got
Speaker 1: stuff to do. We got fish to catch. And Zack's
Speaker 1: dad was right. The doctors had taken a blood sample
Speaker 1: that held the key to finding out what was really
Speaker 1: going on here, a seemingly simple course of action that
Speaker 1: would give the Dopbec family the answers They were desperate for.
Speaker 1: The blood culture that they had taken that night. Eight
Speaker 1: in the emergency room was growing MERCA. I don't know
Speaker 1: if everyone knows MERCA, but it stands from methicillin resistance
Speaker 1: staff aureous. It's a staff bacteria that is um resistant
Speaker 1: to the majority of antibiotics that we have, and it
Speaker 1: tends to be very aggressive and cause very serious infections sometimes.
Speaker 1: And so they knew he was in septic shock from merca.
Speaker 1: They had finally gotten to the bottom of what was
Speaker 1: slowly draining the life from Zach mersa that had developed
Speaker 1: into sepsis. Here's Dr Jem O'Brien, the vice president of
Speaker 1: Operations for Population Health and Ohio Health and a board
Speaker 1: member of the Sepsis Alliance. For those not familiar with sepsis,
Speaker 1: could you give me a layman's definition. Yeah, So, your
Speaker 1: body has an army that's designed to fight infections. And
Speaker 1: if you think about if you get a local infection
Speaker 1: of boil or ingrown, tony al or something, it gets
Speaker 1: read head, it gets inflamed, it hurts, it might even
Speaker 1: have some pasts, and then it gets better. What sepsis
Speaker 1: is is when those body defense systems actually go haywire,
Speaker 1: and so instead of having a focused response to the infection,
Speaker 1: you wind up with widespread response to infection throughout the body,
Speaker 1: and so your body functionally suffers friendly fire from your
Speaker 1: immune system trying to battle the infection. If you experience
Speaker 1: septic shock, the risk of dying goes up by about
Speaker 1: one percent for every five minutes that passes without appropriate antibiotics.
Speaker 1: Zach had gone into septic shock because of how rapidly
Speaker 1: the mercer had spread throughout his body. They knew what
Speaker 1: disease they were up against, but every minute was now
Speaker 1: critical to finding a treatment that could save his life.
Speaker 1: An orthopedis came to see me and my husband to
Speaker 1: tell me that he had a massive infection. It's called osteomyelitis.
Speaker 1: It's a bone infection in his femur bone or his
Speaker 1: thigh bone, and he needed urgent surgery. So the orthopedist
Speaker 1: shout out Dr Minkowitz, who saved his life, took him
Speaker 1: from the m r I directly to the emergency room.
Speaker 1: So I ended up having six surgeries on my femur
Speaker 1: and they basically just scooped out the bone that was infected.
Speaker 1: Sounds pretty gross. It is pretty gross. I have a
Speaker 1: really cool scar now, which I love my scar, so
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. I had basically no femur, so they
Speaker 1: had to just let that bone regrow. After the surgeries
Speaker 1: on his femur, Zach was seeing small improvements, but the
Speaker 1: doctors were still struggling to break his fever, and we're
Speaker 1: concerned about it causing long term brain damage. Here's Dr
Speaker 1: O'Brien again. One of the things we're just beginning to
Speaker 1: understand is there's also something called post sepsis syndrome that
Speaker 1: is present maybe as many as fifty of all survivors
Speaker 1: of sepsis, and could present in a wide range of ways.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that's been most well studied is
Speaker 1: actually the presence of something called cognitive dysfunction. Think about
Speaker 1: people having problems with memory or doing calculations, kind of
Speaker 1: the higher order functions of our brain. People can have
Speaker 1: significant limitations as a result of that. But all that
Speaker 1: changed when the nurses made a routine swamp of Zack's
Speaker 1: IVY line. A lot of times when patients are in
Speaker 1: an I c U, they have what's called like a
Speaker 1: central line, you know, so instead of having just an
Speaker 1: ivy in your arm, it's in a bigger blood vessel.
Speaker 1: So he had what's called the central line entering in
Speaker 1: his neck, and you know, it kind of goes in deeper.
Speaker 1: And that central line had gotten like colonized with the bacteria.
Speaker 1: And so once they pulled that out and put a
Speaker 1: new one in, that's finally when the fever's like stopped.
Speaker 1: I think it kept like circulating the bacteria. When they
Speaker 1: finally got rid of that, that's when things finally started
Speaker 1: to take a turn for the better. Finally, a light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel changing out that central
Speaker 1: line led to a pretty rapid recovery for Zach. Just
Speaker 1: a couple of days later, the doctors were able to
Speaker 1: take him off oxygen. He was breathing on his own
Speaker 1: again for the first time. I'm in weeks. I remember
Speaker 1: when he finally woke up. He was like desperately trying
Speaker 1: to say something, and he had like oxygen, you know,
Speaker 1: like a mask on and we were trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know what does he want to say what? And
Speaker 1: we pulled his mask away, and you know what he said.
Speaker 1: He said, I just want to say thank you very much,
Speaker 1: And like the nurses all started to cry, and I
Speaker 1: remember saying, like, see, see, he's so special. That's like
Speaker 1: one of my mom's favorite stories. They told her, like, oh,
Speaker 1: when he wakes up, like you might hear some some
Speaker 1: things you've never heard before, and she's like, not my son,
Speaker 1: he would never I just said wanted to say thank you.
Speaker 1: I guess that's pretty impressive. So you were in a
Speaker 1: medically induced coma for twelve days, you know, nearly two weeks.
Speaker 1: That is surreal on so many levels. Do you remember
Speaker 1: anything about coming out of it? I actually did have
Speaker 1: one really crazy, crazy, like very distinct memory, like a
Speaker 1: coma dream basically, which is pretty wild. Um. I was
Speaker 1: in a target parking lot and I was actually in
Speaker 1: a wheelchair, and my mom pushed me in a target,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the target started to burn down,
Speaker 1: and I actually got separated from my mom. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I was in a wheelchair, I couldn't really move on
Speaker 1: my own. And eventually, as the target was burning down,
Speaker 1: some person found me and rolled me outside the building
Speaker 1: and I was eventually reunited with my mom. And I
Speaker 1: know it's crazy, but like the symbolism in that is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Zach had gone from playing Little League baseball on Wednesday
Speaker 1: to being on the verge of death on Sunday. That's
Speaker 1: how rapidly mercer and stepsis took hold of his body.
Speaker 1: Searing pain, fevers, confusion, delusion and multi system failure, countless
Speaker 1: antibiotics and treatments, a medically induced coma, six surgeries, months
Speaker 1: of rehabilitation. Zack pulled through all of that with the
Speaker 1: support of his family. So they wouldn't let me leave
Speaker 1: the impatient rehab hospital for a while until they thought
Speaker 1: I was stable enough to get in the car. So
Speaker 1: I guess what we did. As soon as they told
Speaker 1: me I could leave the hospital, my dad was like
Speaker 1: talking to all the doctors making sure we could go.
Speaker 1: He took me to some fishing pier about thirty minutes away.
Speaker 1: I was in a wheelchair. He pushed me out on
Speaker 1: the dock and uh, you know, we caught little blue
Speaker 1: fish that were no more than like five inches long.
Speaker 1: But I know it sounds a little cheesy, but that's
Speaker 1: when I knew like it would be okay, Like the
Speaker 1: sun setting over the water, I'm catching fish with my
Speaker 1: dad and that was like I was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be okay. They were a little blue fish, but they
Speaker 1: might as well have been swordfish right for me. It's
Speaker 1: like it was like a magical experience. It really was.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Zach went on to make a strong recovery,
Speaker 1: but nerve damage to his leg remained. He was no
Speaker 1: longer able to play competitive sports, no longer able to
Speaker 1: go on long walks or hikes, and sustain some mobility issues.
Speaker 1: It was hard being like the athletic kid that wanted
Speaker 1: to play all the sports and coming out of it
Speaker 1: being barely able to even walk. It was definitely physically
Speaker 1: and mentally challenging. And that's where that phishing passion comes
Speaker 1: into play. I needed something that I could call my own,
Speaker 1: something that makes me happy, something where I could be outside,
Speaker 1: and you know, that became fishing, but more than just
Speaker 1: the fishing part, it was a new me. And remember
Speaker 1: that huge scar Zach had from all those surgeries on
Speaker 1: his femur. You said that you love your scar. Can
Speaker 1: you describe it and what is it that you love
Speaker 1: about it? So it's probably seven or eight inches long
Speaker 1: down my entire femur, pretty much like the lower half
Speaker 1: of my femur into my knee, and it's a pretty
Speaker 1: big scar. But it's kind of like my battle wound,
Speaker 1: you know, like I can say that I beat that
Speaker 1: and I have something to show for it. I remember
Speaker 1: my surgeon actually said to me that she could kind
Speaker 1: of make it look a little better, um, and I
Speaker 1: was like, no, you you don't get to touch that.
Speaker 1: That's my battle wound from winning the battle. So I
Speaker 1: have a really cool tattoo idea that I really want
Speaker 1: to get, like a fish head on one end of
Speaker 1: the scar and a fish tail on the other and
Speaker 1: kind of like a fish carcass, almost the crossbones going
Speaker 1: through the scar and the scar being the backbone. So
Speaker 1: I want to get that soon. And my parents are
Speaker 1: surprisingly in full support because they know that's like super
Speaker 1: meaningful and like I said, it's my battle wound, a
Speaker 1: badge of honor to remind him of the fight of
Speaker 1: his life against a mysterious illness that turned out to
Speaker 1: be sepsis, A mysterious illness that took him from healthy
Speaker 1: to the e R in three days, A mysterious illness
Speaker 1: that is actually much more prevalent than people may realize.
Speaker 1: How common is sepsis exceedingly common. So in the US alone,
Speaker 1: there are approximately one point six million cases a year,
Speaker 1: results in nearly three d thousand deaths just in this
Speaker 1: country alone. So it's the most expensive reason for hospitalization,
Speaker 1: it's the most likely reason for readmissions. So it's an
Speaker 1: exceedingly common diagnosis. We do a national poll of Americans
Speaker 1: have never heard the word sepsis. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that Sepsis Alliance is dedicated so highly to
Speaker 1: awareness is to try and make it easier for people
Speaker 1: to communicate about this actual disease. I think the things
Speaker 1: that I like come back to our raising consciousness about sepsis,
Speaker 1: that it is a possibility and at least considering it,
Speaker 1: trusting your instincts, and don't be afraid. Don't be afraid
Speaker 1: to bring it up. You know, say it out loud,
Speaker 1: you know, go to your doctor and say, like, I
Speaker 1: listened to an heart radio podcast about sepsis, could this
Speaker 1: be sepsis? Like, don't be afraid to say it, because
Speaker 1: sometimes doctors are not thinking of it. People sometimes say like, oh,
Speaker 1: is it hard to talk about? And I told you,
Speaker 1: I don't really look back on as a negative. And
Speaker 1: I like to share my story and make people more
Speaker 1: aware and how mentally and physically I've been through challenges
Speaker 1: and struggles and I'm still Zach, but I keep saying
Speaker 1: it shaped me, like it made me who I am.
Speaker 1: To find out more information, visit the Sepsis Alliance at
Speaker 1: sepsis dot org. My name is Zake Dobec and when
Speaker 1: I was eleven years old, I suffered from immerse infection
Speaker 1: in my right femur. I went into septic shock and
Speaker 1: was placed into a medically induced coma for twelve days.
Speaker 1: On the next episode, of Symptomatic. Shelby Morrison faces a
Speaker 1: life threatening health crisis that spirals as her first pregnant
Speaker 1: see progresses. Everything started to flare back up again when
Speaker 1: I got pregnant, and um my body freaked out. I
Speaker 1: just remember praying in the room, you know, to let
Speaker 1: me meet my daughter, to let me get through this
Speaker 1: with my wife. I didn't want it to all in
Speaker 1: before it even it all started. Symptomatic a Medical Mystery
Speaker 1: podcast is an original podcast from I Heart Radio. Are
Speaker 1: shows hosted by me Lauren Bright Pacheco. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Matt Romano and myself. Our EP of post production is
Speaker 1: James Foster. Our producers are cra Kaiser and John Irwin.