DALLAS (KDAF) — “I figured I would take the over-the-counter pain medication, and it would go away. It was just something that I didn’t really know about.”
Frisco’s Julia Fraser was only 18-years-old when she nearly died from a life-threatening disease called sepsis caused by an untreated urinary tract infection.
“I had gotten a UTI. Which many women in their lives have experienced. I can say, for myself, that it was my first. But many women have to overcome UTIs across their entire lives. And none of us have ever believed they were life-threatening, especially me. I had never really heard of them, you know, in high school or middle school, and we had those health education classes. It was just never talked about,” Fraser said.
When she originally caught her UTI, she had started using an over the counter product pain relief medication called AZO. What she didn’t know is that instead of making the UTI disappear the medicine was suppressing her symptoms.
The infection spread to her kidneys and other organs, causing multi-system organ failure and a seizure that landed her in the intensive care unit.