A popular TikTok creator has warned other holidaymakers not to ignore a simple symptom that left her fighting for her life in hospital. Chloe Barry-Hang, who has around 170,000 followers on the social media platform, was visiting Greece when she suddenly began to feel fatigued.
The Australian dismissed it as the result of her long journey and general “run down” associated with travelling, but three days later, her condition took a dramatic turn. She felt feverish, her body started shaking, and the realisation dawned that something wasn’t right, News.com reports. What the 31-year-old had thought was simple exhaustion was actually a kidney infection, a painful type of urinary tract infection (UTI) that required two days of hospitalisation and IV antibiotic treatment.
Chloe’s videos went viral on TikTok after she quit her corporate job to launch the lifestyle brand K. Juliet.
She said in a clip shared to social media after her hospitalisation: “I had a UTI about a month ago, I thought it had gone away because I wasn’t getting any symptoms anymore.
“It had gone up into my bladder, then continued up into my kidney, which has now created a kidney infection.”
“In terms of sicknesses I’ve had, I would say this one scared me the most,” she added. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make this’. “
Symptoms of a kidney infection include a high temperature, feeling or being sick, pain in your lower back or side, flu-like pain, and burning or stinging during urination, according to the NHS.
If left untreated, infections can become fatal within days, with the bacteria potentially spreading from the kidneys into the bloodstream and causing sepsis.
Sepsis is a life-threatening state triggered by an extreme immune response to an infection, when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue and organs.
When caught early, however, kidney infections are highly treatable and rarely fatal.
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
