An NHS Lanarkshire improvement advisor is dedicating her career to raising awareness of Sepsis after the condition killed her sister, two days after her 28^th birthday.

Connie Sharrock lost one of her youngest sisters to sepsis four years ago.

Connie said: “My youngest sister Joni was a twin. She had Systemic Lupus Erythmatosis (SLE), which is an auto immune disease. She had battled the disease since she was about twelve years old.

“She was what I would call a ‘professional patient’. She was always in and out of hospital and thought that she knew her own boundaries in her condition.

“I spoke to her on her 28^th birthday and she said that she didn’t feel well but that she didn’t want to go to hospital.”

Two days later, Connie flew out to Dubai for a holiday.

Connie said: “I had been in Dubai for eight hours when I got a call from home when we were getting ready to go out. Joni’s twin sister Ashley told me that Joni had died.

“I felt to the ground and went into shock. It was the darkest period of my life.”

Connie added: “I was a pharmacist at the time and still didn’t realise how quickly sepsis can kill you, particularly when you are immunosuppressed like she was.

“It has the ability to kill a healthy person within a matter of hours if it isn’t recognised. Never mind an unhealthy person.

“She was so experienced with her own condition that she thought it was just a normal set back. However, when I look back there were signs that she had sepsis and should have went straight there.

“If I could rewind the clock one thing I would say is don’t wait. I would have told her to go straight to the hospital.

“When I joined NHS Lanarkshire as an improvement advisor, we had a discussion of what work streams we wanted to work on. I decided that I wanted to support the sepsis team.

“The experience of losing my sister has spurred me on to take more of an interest in the mechanics of sepsis. It’s more meaningful to me.

“If I had known then what I know now, then things might have turned out differently for my sister.”