Healthy mum who thought she had food poisoning died days later

A supremely fit mother who thought she was battling food poisoning passed away within days after a devastating sepsis infection caused her organs to fail. Claire McCormack, 47, a senior staff nurse in infectious diseases at Forth Valley Royal Hospital, deteriorated rapidly after waking up feeling ill on 23rd June last year. Her heartbroken daughter, Steph Burgoyne, 20, revealed that the family initially thought Claire had contracted a stomach bug or food poisoning after attending a neighbour's barbecue just two days prior. Yet within hours of arriving at A&E, Claire had become delirious, her skin had turned purple, and doctors were left with no choice but to place her in an induced coma as she suffered multi-organ failure brought on by sepsis. Steph recalled how her mum – affectionately nicknamed "Turbo" by colleagues due to her boundless energy – never regained consciousness and tragically died six days later, reports the Daily Record . She said: "My mum called in sick to work on the Monday morning as she'd been up through the night with a tummy bug and was generally unwell. She had been totally fine the day before, everything was normal. "She had been to a neighbour's BBQ on the Saturday, so the only thing we could think was she might have food poisoning. "I was working from home and kept checking on her, but by 10am she was in severe pain so I called our doctors. They advised me to call the emergency services and in the end I decided to take her to AandE at her own hospital." Claire, from Falkirk, was assessed straight away upon reaching hospital and sent for examinations, but medics were unable to pinpoint what had caused her rapid decline. Steph, an apprentice IT consultant, said: "I started calling my gran and stepdad Sandy while they did tests as she was quickly getting worse. We were just racking our brains trying to think if something had happened through the week that could have caused this." Within hours, medical staff decided to put Claire into an induced coma in intensive care and commence dialysis. Steph said: "My mum was not reacting to any medication. She went into multi-organ failure and I just couldn't comprehend when a doctor told me that she could die. "In the blink of an eye she had gone from having a normal weekend, dancing at a BBQ, to fighting for her life. It made no sense." By that evening, medics suspected sepsis – a potentially fatal condition where the body's defence mechanism against infection starts to harm its own organs. Despite intensive treatment, Claire's health kept deteriorating and she passed away on Sunday, June 29. Steph said: "They tried so many different meds and treatments but she just didn't respond. We later found out she didn't have a spleen, which made it very hard for her to survive." Experts were unable to establish precisely how Claire contracted sepsis and believed it was "very unlikely" to have originated from her hospital employment. Steph continued: "She spent her whole career caring for others and had huge knowledge of sepsis, which makes losing her to it even harder to understand. "My mum was the life and soul of the party, the liveliest person you could meet. She was fit, she went to the gym. "It just underlines how sepsis is a silent killer that does not discriminate, no matter your age or health." Steph revealed the family – including stepdad Sandy and gran Denise – are still grappling with how rapidly Claire was snatched away from them. They are now collecting funds for Sepsis Research FEAT in her honour and spreading awareness of the illness. She added: "I've now got a life ahead of me of milestones where my mum won't be there. But the whole family is suffering. "We're trying to turn something so horrible into something positive, because that's what she would have wanted. "I would plead with anyone reading this to familiarise yourself with the signs of sepsis – recognising them early could genuinely save a life." For more information about sepsis and signs of symptoms visit, here.