I was at Coachella when I got the call.
“Alex? Can you hear me?”
Music from Father John Misty blared over my mom’s voice. “Sort of,” I said, curling up on the ground like an ailing arachnid and pressing my phone closer.
“I have something serious to tell you,” she said.
I knew that voice. It was the tone of a doctor who’s seen death up close. It was the sound of a wife and mother bearing unthinkable news. It was the noise from my nightmares reverberating into reality.
“Dad is in the ICU. He’s in serious condition.”
I bolted upright. “Is he stable?”
“He is at the moment, but the nurse said that these things are very touch and go.”
Touch and go? I felt sick. My arms trembled like pylons in an earthquake. “Should I come home?”
“I think you have to ask yourself if you want to be here to see him. He could die from this.”
The next hour was the worst of my life. I don’t remember large chunks of it. What I do remember haunts me. I remember running away from the stage repeating “Oh no oh no oh no.” I have a flash memory of dry heaving into a potted palm tree. I recall sobbing uncontrollably in the car. And as much as I’d like to, I can’t forget having a meltdown while packing my suitcase — crying, yelling, and pounding my fists on the ground like a five-year old.
My dad was dying of sepsis. And I felt helpless, 200 miles away at a concert in Palm Springs.
You might not have heard of sepsis. You’re not alone — almost half the population hasn’t either.
Sepsis is the body’s extreme reaction to an infection. The immune system essentially backfires and triggers inflammatory responses throughout the body. The infection can start anywhere — pneumonia, the skin, or a UTI. Sepsis is considered severe sepsis when organs exhibit signs of malfunctioning, like difficulty breathing or abnormally high heart rate. Septic shock takes hold when blood pressure drops to a critical low, even with treatment and intravenous fluids.