Dallas man recalls near fatal battle with flu

Dallas County has seen 74 people die as a result of this year’s flu season. One North Texas man knows he was so close to being a fatal flu statistic

Barry Pound finally returned to work this week after getting enough strength back from fighting the flu that almost took his life

Like many others, Pound got a flu shot. Yet, he still contracted the flu. The virus evolved into a blood infection, sepsis and almost took his life.

It all started when Pound began running a fever the week of December 10. His first weapon was Tamiflu. But by the end of the week, his fever spiked to 104 and his breathing was distressed.

“My wife called 911 and took me to the hospital,” he recalled. “That’s about the last thing I remember for several weeks.”

Pound went to Baylor at White Rock Lake. But since he was in critical condition, doctors requested he be transferred.

“And I think one of the questions on there was ‘What would be the outcome if the patient is not transferred?’ And he just wrote in ‘death,’” Pound said.

Pound was moved to the main Baylor hospital and was put in a medically-induced coma. He spent 22 days in ICU. The flu had become much more.

“They assumed pneumonia or some other type of bacterial infection. Very quickly from that, I developed sepsis, a blood infection that really quickly started shutting down all of my organs,” he recalled. “There were multiple times when the doctors told my wife that they were very skeptical that I was going to make it.”

After three weeks at Baylor and weeks more inpatient rehabilitation, Barry beat it and is just now returning to work.

“It’s very, very humbling. You empathize with the families whose loved ones have died from the same sort of pattern that I went through,” he said. “It makes you contemplate your life and purpose a bit when you get that close because it was very, very serious.”

High volumes of IV antibiotics and doctors focusing on each organ as they began shutting down is what saved Pound’s life. Because of the sepsis blood infection that traveled through his brain, he had to take the driving portion of the driving license test again to make sure his cognitive reasoning and reflexes had not been impaired.