What began as a seemingly routine cough ended in life-altering complications for a 52-year-old woman who later had both legs amputated below the knee.
Denise Dibrell was in Tennessee for her cousin’s wedding in July 2025 when she developed a violent cough that left her struggling to breathe whenever she lay flat.
Although the symptoms briefly seemed to settle, the breathing issues did not fully go away after she returned to Las Vegas, Nevada, prompting her to seek medical attention.
At an urgent care clinic, staff found her oxygen levels were dangerously low and tested her for influenza A. After the result came back positive, medics arranged for her to be taken by ambulance to St Rose Dominican Hospital for additional treatment.
Denise recalls seeing the ambulance arrive, but her next memory is waking up around 40 days later.
While she was unconscious, influenza A triggered sepsis and septic shock. Severe respiratory problems meant doctors had to place her into an induced coma.
Influenza can lead to serious complications including sepsis, a life-threatening condition where the body’s response to infection causes inflammatory reactions throughout the body. This inflammation can damage multiple organ systems and cause them to fail. Research indicates that influenza A is one of the strongest predictors of septic shock, with higher incidence rates than other viral respiratory infections.
Her blood pressure dropped to a critical level, and doctors used vasopressors to narrow her blood vessels and preserve blood flow to her essential organs. But the reduced circulation to her feet caused irreversible damage, and both eventually became necrotic.
The use of vasopressors in septic shock, while necessary to maintain blood flow to vital organs, poses a serious risk of peripheral limb ischemia—a lack of blood flow to the extremities—which can lead to tissue necrosis and amputation. In sepsis cases, blood clots are a frequent cause of amputations, as the body’s clotting mechanism works overtime. When nutrients cannot reach the fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet, and legs, the tissues begin to die and can develop gangrene.
Denise said: “I had so many blood clots, and my blood pressure plummeted so low because there was no circulation getting to my feet.
“There was nothing they could do about it.
“Over the course of the next 30 days my feet died and became mummified and all while I was in a coma.”
After the family learned she had been hospitalised, her 56-year-old brother David flew out to be with her.
On August 15, Denise’s mother, Patricia, 76, was approached by doctors about the possibility of ending life support.
Denise said: “Thank God she said ‘no, let’s keep her on life support’…They had tested for brain activity and all that good stuff and were saying I should be ok but couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be issues – cognitively there are some but nothing I’ve seen other people have to deal with.
“Had she said no, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
She woke up on August 18 and later said she initially had little understanding of what had happened to her.
After her condition improved, Denise was discharged on August 20. Less than a month later, on September 15, 2025, she underwent a three-hour operation to amputate both legs below the knee.
The weeks and months that followed brought more setbacks. She dealt with antibiotic-resistant infections, additional blood clots, and total hair loss. She also needed revision surgery after her right leg failed to heal as expected.
Denise has now been fitted with prosthetic legs and has started the long process of learning how to move independently again.
She said: “My mental capacity came back pretty good, but I did have some memory loss
“I also had physical therapy and have started learning how to walk again.
“Now I’m in my below-the-knee prosthetics, and I can walk aided.
“I can walk with a walker.”
She has also lost her job, and because she no longer has insurance, her physical therapy has been paused for now. Even so, Denise says she is focused on pushing ahead rather than dwelling on what happened.
Denise said: “I’m out here kicking ass, I’m not laying down and not sitting in misery
“I see it as a blessing more than I do anything else.”
She added: “There’s the saying ‘life or limb’, and mine was life”.