Well, this is one of those very scary news story that, thank God, is a very rare occurrence, that makes all of us look at our loved ones and thank the heavens that they are still with us.  It also makes us very aware that life is precious and even the most seemingly harmless little surgeries are in fact, surgeries and still present some sort of threat to our health if our bodies do not react favorably and/or predictably toward them.

The 37 year old man, Jem Abbott and his wife Karen, had decided that after two children they were done having kids, so Jem decided to have the vasectomy, which is a very low risk and relatively painless and easy procedure that is done under local anesthesia.  Jem was told the same thing that every man about to undergo a vasectomy is told, that the procedure was relatively quick and painless, and that he just may experience a bit of swelling and tenderness in the area afterwards, but he would remedy that with the typical ice packs, or bags of frozen peas as more commonly prescribed. 

However, Jem started feeling badly and vomiting and having diarrhea just days after the surgery.  Unbeknownst to him at the time, his body was experiencing a deadly reaction to surgeries, in which the body actually attacks itself instead of the infection (I guess this can also happen any time there is infection, not just in surgery cases), called septicemia.  Jem unfortunately succumbed to the deadly bacterial infection in which his body attacked itself in one week after his low risk operation.  The doctor had apparently prescribed antibiotics to fend off what he thought was a normal bacterial infection and it was already too late.

Septicemia is extremely rare, and therefore is rarely talked about in the media and news stories.  A good thing, because this clearly is a tragedy since a father of two has been taken from his young children after undergoing what he thought would just be routine for him.  And why wouldn’t he think that?  Our heart goes out to the Abbott family.