In 2015, Audrey Leishman was a 31-year-old mother who thought she was battling the flu when her mild illness turned into a life-threatening medical crisis.

Within days, she was fighting for her life in the intensive care unit, spending 10 days in the hospital—including five days in a medically induced coma.

The Virginia Beach mom’s story has gained renewed attention following the death of NASCAR star Kyle Busch from sepsis. Leishman, who is now recovered, is sharing her experience in hopes of alerting others to the warning signs of the condition.

Married to professional golfer Marc Leishman, now runs the Begin Again Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to sepsis awareness. She has also authored a children’s book designed to help families recognize potential symptoms early.

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Her ordeal began while caring for her two young sons, then 19 months and 3 years old, while her husband was away. Feeling feverish, achy, and chilled, she assumed she had the flu.

“I had never actually had the flu before, but I was achy, feverish and cold,” she recalled in an interview with Fox News Digital. “And so I thought, this seems like the flu.”

Over the next few days, her condition worsened. Her fever climbed, and she developed severe stomach pain and other unusual symptoms. “At one point, I actually thought I was going a little bit crazy, because my right elbow and left big toe started hurting,” she said. “It was the most random thing.”

When she became too weak to care for her children and started having nosebleeds, a friend urged her to see a doctor. At an Urgent Care clinic, clinicians found her temperature and heart rate dangerously high and her blood pressure critically low. She was rushed by ambulance to the hospital.

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At the time, sepsis was not as widely recognized in hospitals as it is today, Leishman said. “They took a very long time to figure out what was going wrong with me,” she recalled. Doctors initially suspected autoimmune issues before identifying sepsis.

She was ultimately admitted to the ICU and placed into a medically induced coma as her condition deteriorated. The illness progressed to acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS.

“I very much remember not being able to breathe,” she said. “It got to the point where I had to pause between every word to take a breath.”

Doctors told her later that there had been a “good chance” she might not awaken from the coma. When she finally did, she faced months of recovery that included physical therapy and a PICC line for medication. “It was quite the process of relearning how to walk again,” she said.

Her immune system remained fragile during her recovery, leaving her often ill that first year. Though doctors could not pinpoint the cause of her sepsis, Leishman said it might have been connected to a recent IUD removal.

She was also diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome and had concurrent infections including tonsillitis, strep throat, pneumonia, and a urinary tract infection. “I was a very, very sick person,” she said.

Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel explained that sepsis occurs when infection spreads into the bloodstream, triggering an overwhelming inflammatory response.

“The body reacts by making inflammatory chemicals,” he said. “It’s the immune system revving up … but it can hurt more than help.”

Leishman described the body’s reaction this way: “Instead of your body sending out the Navy SEALs, it sends out the entire U.S. Armed Forces.” As the condition worsens, blood pressure can fall, organs can fail, and oxygen delivery can plummet, leading to potentially fatal complications like ARDS.

After leaving the hospital, Leishman was shocked by how few people had heard of sepsis. “I had never heard of sepsis—and I realized that was why I almost died,” she said. “If I had known what the symptoms were and what to look out for, I would have sought treatment earlier.”

She also faced steep medical expenses for home care, antibiotics, and rehabilitation. “I learned that sepsis is the most expensive hospitalization bill there is,” she noted.

Those experiences inspired her to create the Begin Again Foundation, which supports sepsis awareness and assists families facing financial hardship after medical emergencies. “If I can help ease that burden, so they can focus more on the recovery, it is my absolute passion and honor to continue to do that,” she said.

Her children’s book, “Katie Koala’s Biggest Bite,” tells the story of a little girl who gets hurt, becomes sick, and receives care quickly enough to avoid serious complications.

Leishman hopes the story helps both kids and parents recognize the signs of sepsis early. Her advice to families: ask the doctor, “Could this be sepsis?”

“Just asking that question,” she said, “could lead them on the path to run a different lab panel or look at the symptoms in a different way.”

Every hour that sepsis goes untreated, Leishman warned, the mortality rate rises by up to 8 percent.

“Time truly is the most important thing—and getting that early treatment can prevent you from even being hospitalized,” she said. “It can happen from any infection, from strep throat to a UTI to a cut.”

Today, healthy again but changed by her experience, Leishman continues to share her story so that others might recognize sepsis before it’s too late.