Journalist hospitalised with sepsis after failing to recognise symptoms despite conducting interview with survivor weeks earlier

A journalist is raising awareness about the symptoms of sepsis after she failed to recognise them herself despite interviewing someone who almost died from it weeks earlier.

BBC Scotland presenter Sarah McMullan took to Twitter at the weekend highlighting her original interview, and explained how she failed to spot her body's extreme response to an infection, which can be life-threatening.

"A month after doing this interview, I ended up very unwell with sepsis myself," McMullan wrote. "Resulting in an [emergency department] visit, a week in hospital and a couple more weeks of tablets and rest."

Watch the video above.

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McMullan, 30, later told BBC she started to feel "really cold" and got goose bumps during a shift in the morning, but waited over 36 hours to call emergency services.

She spent six days in hospital recovering, and during her stay, McMullan's temperature spiked to 40 degrees.

"If you suspect sepsis don't hesitate to get help. I should've acted sooner," she said, before linking to The Nine's interview, during which Kimberley Bradley, who was in a coma for eight days due to sepsis, spoke about the symptoms to look out for.

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McMullan's ordeal in early October happened weeks after she conducted the interview with Bradley in September for Sepsis Awareness month.

Bradley told the BBC program she was induced into a coma for eight days after contracting meningococcal septicaemia, which had developed into sepsis – a rare but life-threatening complication of an infection also known as blood poisoning.

"She spoke through all of the symptoms and what to look out for and what to remember and when to get help and I did not remember them well enough," McMullan told BBC Radio Scotland's Drivetime.

After confiding in a colleague that something was "not right", McMullan said she started "physically shaking and all the colour drained from my face".

"My lips were turning blue. My hands were chalk white, like you had been standing outside in winter for hours," McMullan said.

"There was no colour in my skin. There was no heat in my body. It was uncontrolled shivering and shaking."

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McMullan recalled feeling "spaced out" but she was confused and "weepy" as to what was happening, at first believing she was having a panic attack. She said it went on for about 40 minutes, but then she went into the studio to deliver her final bulletin for the morning.

At the time, McMullan thought it was because she hadn't had any breakfast, or that she was coming down with the flu.

"Because the symptoms can be so many things I did not realise how unwell I was," McMullan said.

Her symptoms persisted that afternoon, and two days later, by Friday morning, she had been admitted to the hospital with a kidney infection as a category two patient. Category one is life-threatening.

She was discharged after six days in the hospital.

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"It could have been a lot worse. That's what I was told on several occasions," McMullan told the program. "The doctors kept saying to me 'You have been very lucky here'."

Symptoms of sepsis in adults include slurred speech, extreme muscle pain or shivering, no passing of urine in a day, severe breathlessness, skin discolouration or mottling, high heart rate and high or low body temperature.

In children, symptoms of sepsis include a pale, blue-tinged or mottled appearance, lethargy or being difficult to wake up, being abnormally cold to the touch, very fast breathing, rashes that do not fade when pressed, and seizures or convulsions.

For McMullan, she highlights the extreme spike in temperature and "uncontrolled" shivering as her main warning signs, and urged listeners to go to the hospital if they experience any symptoms.

"It really is the difference between it being life or death in some instances," she said.

Now back at work, McMullan thanked those who had sent her well-wishes after she spoke out about her ordeal.

She wrote on Twitter overnight: "Thank you everyone for the kind well wishes. Very glad to be back to work, back in the studio and back to business."