By CASSIDY MORRISON SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Published: 14:26 GMT, 15 March 2026 | Updated: 14:47 GMT, 15 March 2026

I'll never forget the fear I felt when I saw my mom lying in bed, hooked up to so many machines, fighting for her life in a hospital.

While this was my first visit, my mother, Aileen Morrison, 61, is no stranger to medical facilities.

She was diagnosed with renal tubular acidosis in her 30s, and her kidneys had been slowly failing ever since.

The condition meant her kidneys could not properly filter acids from her blood, causing it to become too acidic, which can lead to a malfunction that triggers extreme fatigue, confusion and nausea among other things.

By the time she was in her late 50s, she needed a transplant. The operation itself was a success in 2016.

But then, five years later, she found herself suffering a life-threatening side effect: sepsis.

Organ recipients are particularly vulnerable to the often deadly reaction to infection because they typically take a lifelong course of immunosuppressive drugs. These weaken the immune system to prevent it from attacking the transplanted organ. But it can also make fighting off ordinary infections especially difficult.

In my mom's case, an infection had somehow spread to her bloodstream and transplanted kidney - potentially caused by strep bacteria, though we still don't know for sure.