Warwick Davis opens up on wife's sepsis trauma as his family gathered to 'say goodbye'

Warwick Davis has opened up on his wife's traumatic experience with sepsis, revealing that he had gathered their family around her hospital bed to say goodbye at one point.

The Harry Potter and Tenable star's wife Sam had fallen ill in 2019 and was rushed to hospital for treatment for sepsis, where he and their two children faced a scary wait to find out whether she would recover.

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Sepsis can be deadly if not caught in time and doctors believed Sam's was caused by an infection from a spinal surgery.

Davis told The Sun: "The next few hours were the longest of my life as I waited on the ward with our children in the empty space left by Sam’s hospital bed. I hoped it would not symbolise a future for us without her."

Recalling the terrifying time they spent supporting her in hospital, he added: "Our family gathered by her bedside; although optimistic, we were sort of saying goodbye in case Sam didn’t survive."

Sam's symptoms had included itchiness, extreme exhaustion and becoming drowsy.

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Luckily, Sam did recover although her treatment lasted for months and Davis admitted that they both still felt the traumatic effects of what they had been through.

He said: "I broke down every night thinking that this terrible illness that came out of nowhere might take my soulmate away from me."

Davis said that his wife still suffered from PTSD after having had sepsis and added "if I’m completely honest, I do too".

Actor Jason Watkins has previously spoken about the heartbreak of losing his two-year-old daughter Maude to sepsis in 2011.

In 2019, he told Loose Women how his older daughter came in to his and his wife Clara’s room in the morning and told them: “I can't wake Maude.”

"She had died on the morning of New Year,” said Watkins, 52.

“It's almost Dickensian in a way, that in modern medicine that could happen.”

"It's had a cataclysmic effect on our family,” added the actor.

Watch: Warwick Davis on Star Wars and Harry Potter roles