When Donald Norcross was on an American Airlines flight from Florida to Philadelphia last April he suddenly started shaking and rose from his seat to ask a flight attendant for an antacid tablet.
That was the last thing the New Jersey congressman remembers as he passed out and the flight crew determined his condition was grave enough to divert the flight to a North Carolina airport to get him urgent medical attention.
"That's how quickly it happened," he told 70and73.com in an interview on Thursday. "I felt something was wrong, but I had no idea."
What followed was a life-saving visit to a North Carolina hospital and a medical evacuation flight to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where Norcross, then 66, spent five weeks in the hospital including time on a breathing machine, heart pump and dialysis unit. Later, he needed physical therapy to walk again.
"You were a whisper away from death," he was told.
The near-death experience grew from an infected gall bladder, which triggered sepsis to quickly invade his body. Without a speedy diagnosis and treatment, the extreme infection can quickly kill by shutting down the body's major organs.
Norcross said he knew little of sepsis and how it affects 1.7 million people annually and is the third leading cause of death in hospitals. Each year, 350,000 in the United States die from sepsis.
On Thursday, Norcross and colleague U.S. Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. of New Jersey introduced the Securing Enhanced Programs, Systems and Initiatives for Sepsis (SEPSIS) Act to have the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focus more on sepsis and develop education programs and best practices for all hospitals.
The bill also would require the federal government to more deeply collect data on sepsis infections in the nation.
"Most sepsis fatalities are preventable with early recognition, diagnosis, and treatment," according to the bill.
Norcross said he is alive today because the North Carolina hospital was able to diagnose sepsis and begin treatment. Many of the naton's hospitals, he fears, are not as prepared.
"Not every hospital across this country has the protocols to identify sepsis early," he said. "Everybody should have access to the greatest health care" to not only survive but come back stronger, Norcross said, noting that people of any age can be infected by sepsis.
Ciaran Staunton and Orlaith Staunton, who lost their 12-year-old son Rory Staunton to sepsis in a preventable death 13 years ago, lauded the bill.Â
Rory was diving for a ball in gym class on a Wednesday at his Jackson Heights, New York school and cut his arm. Two adhesive bandages were applied by the gym teacher and Rory did not even visit the school nurse, according to the ENDSEPSIS movement founded by his parents.
The boy woke up after midnight complaining of leg pain. The hospital physician diagnosed his problem as a stomach virus and sent him home. Rory died Sunday evening, four days after his fall in the gym, according to ENDSEPSIS.
"If the ER doctors had read the bloodwork they ordered, which showed he was fighting a serious infection, he would be alive," according to his parents.
The cost of sepsis is measured in human lives as well as billions spent to treat victims. One estimate, called conservative, in a medical journal article five years ago put the annual cost at $62 billion a year.
Congressman Norcross said his bill is getting bipartisan support. "This should not be controversial at all," he said, adding that many people now come up to him and share stories of how they lost a mother or father to sepsis or had it themselves.
Norcross was told it would take him about a year to recover. He said fatigue was an ongoing issue since April, but now he is at 90% to 95%.
He said he met with the American Airlines crew, thanking them for recognizing a serious medical problem and probably saving his life. If he had stayed on the plane to Philadelphia, he said, he likely would have died for lack of urgent treatment.
"I learned about this the hard way," Norcross said.
