Impacted wisdom tooth led to deadly illness in 23-year-old — and it all started with a rash

Caitlin Alsop was 23 when a rash kept cropping up on her face. It happened for months and was the only ailment — she was otherwise a “typical, healthy” woman in her early 20s.

But the rash was a sign that something deadly had been brewing inside of her body.

“I went to a couple of doctors but I didn’t really think there was anything going on and then I ended up with some flu-like symptoms,” Alsop told news.com.au.

She said she was experiencing a fever, sore throat and sore ear and her GP agreed that she just had the flu and needed to take it easy, so that is what she did.

Eventually, Alsop started to feel better and went to dinner with a friend. But, while eating, she felt like she had bitten her tongue. A few hours later, her tongue and swollen and she’d started to drool.

She was having issues with her breathing and her ability to talk, so she texted her family and they all agreed she was likely having some kind of allergic reaction. However, when she was unable to swallow the antihistamine, she was taken straight to hospital.

Within 45 minutes, doctors also hypothesised she had anaphylaxis and gave her two shots of adrenaline. But, things got worse and she started to fade in and out of consciousness and a severe blue and red rash appeared on the top half of her body.

Alsop was then transferred to Gold Coast University Hospital, where she was known as a “medical mystery.” Her tongue began to blacken and there were talks of a tracheostomy and necrotising fasciitis.

Doctors eventually performed a endotracheal intubation and transferred her into the intensive care unit. Her skin was burning from the inside out. An anaesthetist suspected she had ludwig angina, which involves life-threatening cellulitis of the soft tissue involving the floor of the mouth and neck.

This meant a CT scan and the eventually cause of her problems was identified. Her wisdom tooth had become impacted and infected and it had nearly killed her.

“I had no pain, no symptoms and this nearly killed me overnight. It’s absolutely crazy,” she said.

“I didn’t know that an infection could be so serious. Like so many young people, I had no idea an infection could lead to this. I was walking around and then I was literally burning from the inside out in the ICU as a medical mystery.”

Once that was uncovered, she needed emergency surgery to remove the tooth. Her jugular vein also started to be crushed and so pressure needed to be relieved from that. She was in a coma for nine days.

“I felt like a child when I woke up, because I was just so disorientated,” Alsop said. “I’ve had such strong drugs. I couldn’t really eat, couldn’t really talk, and it was just a very interesting journey.

“But I was just so grateful to be alive, to be able to see, to hear, to breathe like I cannot describe that feeling.”

For the next couple of months, she had open wounds that needed to heal. It wasn’t until a year later that she discovered just how close a call she had. Alsop’s infection had actually developed into sepsis.

Sepsis is a serious condition that happens when the body’s immune system has an extreme response to an infection, resulting in tissue and organ damage.

Alsop said while that knowledge is scary, and not having it at the time likely did change her recovery process, it has given her a new lease on life.

“I’m so determined to make sure that I leave this world a better place,” she said.

“But you know, it is really scary — and what’s the most scary is the amount of people who message me telling me that they’re concerned that their loved one is going through something similar, and they see my story and they want to make sure that it doesn’t happen to them. “We all have to work together to make sure that we do prevent loss of life from sepsis.”

She encouraged people who may suspect they have sepsis to go to the hospital and not be afraid to ask if it is sepsis and have it be investigated.

Alsop has since created the Face Sepsis project after talking to GPs and dentists and realising so many ordinary Australians didn’t know much about it.

Face Sepsis is a simple education program designed to help support practices and primary care recognise sepsis symptoms, as the faster it is treated the better the chance people have.

Alsop is sharing her story ahead of World Sepsis Day on September 13, where Sepsis Australia launching a social media campaign to bring awareness to the condition that kills 8700 Aussies every year.

Sepsis kills one in three people it impacts but only 61 per cent of Australians know what it is. Symptoms of sepsis can included fever or shivering, muscle pain, not passing urine, rapid breathing, confusion or slurred speech, discoloured skin and rapid heart rate.

Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake, Infectious Diseases physician at Canberra Hospital, said: “Sepsis is a time-critical medical emergency as the risk of death from sepsis increases by 8 per cent with every hour that passes before treatment begins. Knowing the common signs and symptoms will help to reduce the risk of preventable death and disability.”

Sepsis Australia’s campaign challenges Aussies to ake part in this tongue twister: “I’m sepsis susceptible and susceptible to sepsis”.

Love Island Australia star Anna McEvoy is one of the Australians throwing their weight behind the sepsis challenge.

In 2023, McEvoy was rushed to hospital after a urinary tract infection she had became progressively worse after taking antibiotics for seven days.

“I had bad pain in my side that was getting progressively worse in my left flank, in my back and moving to my front,” she said at the time.

Eventually, a doctor suspected kidney stones but the scan didn’t show that. Eventually, the pain got worse and she ended up in hospital. She was eventually discharged but things got worse, as she began shaking uncontrollably, her lips turned blue and the pain was “excruciating”.

She was eventually diagnosed with a kidney infection which had transformed into sepsis.