A Note From Amanda:

After learning about the vast number of fatalities that sepsis is responsible for, I wanted to help the UK Sepsis Trust to raise awareness about the condition. The fact that the symptoms were not widely known but that sepsis is treatable if diagnosed quickly enough really made me think. I soon hit on the idea of a writing a book where one of the characters falls ill with sepsis but the symptoms are either missed or explained away in the same way that many of the true life examples I've heard of are. The title of the book coms from the fact that sepsis claims a life somewhere in the world every three and a half seconds, which roughly equates into that number of heartbeats and readers of the book learn about how to recognise the symptoms of sepsis in friends and loved ones. I'm pleased to say that this has clearly worked as I've had several letters from readers who have saved the lives of family members by correctly recognising the tell tale signs of sepsis and pointing these out to doctors who have quickly run tests to confirm it and then provided life saving treatment.