Sepsis almost killed me at 27. Then trolls attacked me online
After four days at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Sam Vanderpump, the 28-year-old reality star, turned to his doctors and asked: “Am I out of the woods?”
“No, not by any stretch of the imagination,” they responded. “In nice words, they were saying: you could still die at any moment,” Vanderpump says. He pauses. “I was terrified. I didn’t know if I’d make it out alive.”
By day eight, he’d lost almost two and a half stone, meaning his weight had plummeted from 87kg to 73kg.
Vanderpump was battling sepsis, which arises when the body’s immune system’s response to an infection causes damage to its own tissues and organs. Vanderpump’s white blood cell count, which he says should be between 8 and 12, would reach double that. His liver enzyme level was wildly out of the normal range — so much so that the whites of his eyes would turn yellow from jaundice.
Sepsis can lead to organ failure and death if not treated promptly. In the UK there are 48,000 sepsis-related deaths each year. If Vanderpump had got to the hospital 24 to 48 hours later, he was told he wouldn’t have made it.
It had felt like an otherwise normal Saturday in December when Vanderpump began experiencing symptoms of what would become a life-threatening diagnosis. He was shopping at Selfridges with his girlfriend, now fiancée, Alice Yaxley. After just an hour, he started feeling out of sorts. He turned to Yaxley and said: “Can we go home?”
Fever, chills, breathlessness and a fast heart rate can all be signs of sepsis. More severe symptoms can include confusion, slurred speech, passing significantly less urine, and mottled or discoloured skin. Dehydration can also be an early warning sign. “I’d taken a litre bottle of water with me and I couldn’t stop drinking it, but nothing would quench my thirst,” says Vanderpump, who is speaking to me from his flat in west London.
With his fiancée, Alice Yaxley
Vanderpump finished the entire litre but still felt parched. When he got home, he went straight into bed. “To be honest, this is when my memory starts to become patchy,” he says, before taking a deep breath. “I don’t know if I’ve blocked it out from trauma or just because of how bad I got. I was suffering from delirium.”
It was at that point that Yaxley looked at Vanderpump dead in the eye and said: “Something isn’t right.”
Today he is sitting on the sofa in his gym clothes — a blue and white ensemble — having just finished playing padel. While he’s trying to stay active, he hasn’t returned to what he calls “full gym workouts.” Listening to him speak now, with a pep in his voice, you’d never guess he’d come so close to dying a few months ago.
Vanderpump is a cast member on Made in Chelsea, the reality TV show which follows a group of affluent twentysomethings as they navigate early adulthood. He’s no stranger to the world of celebrity — his aunt is Lisa Vanderpump, best known for her role on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. His mother, Simone, was once Prince Andrew’s private chef.
“My dad [Mark] went on to own a DJ agency, but in his mid-twenties was installing sound equipment in homes and was installing it at Prince Andrew’s place. The royal dog bit my dad and my mum had to bandage him up. They went out for dinner and I think they were engaged within a few months,” Vanderpump later said of how his parents met. Mark tragically died by suicide in 2018, when he was just 59, from a suspected overdose. Since sharing his battle with sepsis, Vanderpump has been viciously trolled, with people using his family’s status against him.
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“I’ve been attacked for my comment praising the NHS, with things like, ‘It’s very easy for you to say, because you’ve got the money to get jumped forward in the queue.’ This is inaccurate. I haven’t paid for anything with regard to my healthcare. Yes, I come from a wealthy family, but that’s got nothing to do with it.”
Before he had to be rushed to hospital, he had assumed he was still depleted from the flu. Ten days earlier, he had been hospitalised overnight for an asthma attack (the flu had affected his lungs).
Yet more than a week after being discharged, he was still strugglingto shake off the flu symptoms and experiencing back pain. He consulted a GP, who prescribed codeine. “When we got back from shopping, I wasn’t making any sense. Alice spoke to my mum, and they agreed I must be taking too much because of such a heavy-duty painkiller,” he says.
The rest of the weekend was a blur. On Monday, Vanderpump was meant to be flying to Dubai. But three hours before his flight, he was in his dressing gown, with no bags packed.
“I was completely delirious. My mum and Alice spoke on the phone again. They went, ‘Right, let’s get him to the hospital. He’s overdosing on codeine.’” Yaxley even started pouring the pills down the sink. She also called for an ambulance.
“I don’t remember the paramedics coming,” Vanderpump says. “I remember patches of being at the hospital and the doctors asking, ‘What’s going on?’ Because everyone had told me I’d taken too much codeine, that’s what I replied. “They were like, ‘No, you’re taking a prescribed amount.’”
The next thing Vanderpump knew he was on a hospital bed, having blood tests. His mum was by his side. Two hours later, there was news.
“I can’t recall much about the doctor coming in with my bloods. My mum said he looked white in the face. Then I heard the words liver and kidney failure.” He called Yaxley straight away. “She burst into tears on the train to a modelling job,” he says. “None of us had any idea how serious this would turn out to be.” She immediately made her way to hospital.
The blood test was measuring C-reactive protein (CRP) — a protein made by the liver — which increases in response to inflammation. Normal CRP levels are generally less than 3mg/l. Vanderpump’s was a staggering 400mg/l. “The doctors rushed me into the resuscitation department — which was terrifying.’”
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His heart was also in a bad way. “My resting heart rate was 120-130 — bear in mind, my normal resting heart rate is in the sixties,” he says. He also had a catheter fitted because he was unable to pass urine. He spent half a day in the resuscitation department before he stabilised and was moved to a ward.
For the next six hours, Vanderpump was wheeled into endless scans as doctors tried to understand where the infection originated. He was put on a strong intravenous antibiotic as well as antifungal medication. But he was not improving. “That was a very terrifying period,” he says. “It was only after 48 hours that my CRP came down.”
It turned out that a genetic condition led to sepsis. Vanderpump has had congenital hepatic fibrosis (CHP) and polycystic kidney disease (PKD) since birth.
The genetic condition had resulted in an infection of his biliary ducts, also known as cholangitis. Left untreated, it can cause sepsis. While his genetic condition made him extremely vulnerable to contracting sepsis, he’s keen to point out that anyone can get it — often without knowing.
After eight days in hospital, Vanderpump was discharged with a ten-day course of oral antibiotics. After two weeks at his mother’s house, he finally went back to his flat — but his ordeal was far from over. He has had repeat infections since. Fortunately he has spotted the signs before any of them became septic.
One of the low points about sharing his story was just how many people doubted his weight loss. “I even had to put my hospital letter on my Instagram to prove it. I then had to delete that because it had my mum’s personal address on it.” He’s incredulous that people could be so unkind. And rightly so. “This wasn’t a weight-loss programme that I’m advertising,” he says forthrightly. “I’m not making money from this. This is me telling you about what an ordeal I went through.”
He also received comments from people claiming that he had sepsis due to alcohol and drug abuse. “No,” he says firmly. Vanderpump did drink socially prior to getting sick but never excessively. Now, he’s teetotal.
No amount of scepticism will hold him back from raising awareness.
“I’m one of the lucky ones. For so many who go through sepsis — the first time is the last time.”
Sam Vanderpump is an ambassador of the the UK Sepsis Trust, sepsistrust.org