Woman caught flesh-eating bug while out in her garden
A woman who caught a flesh-eating bug while she was walking in her garden said she is ‘lucky to be alive’.
Louise Fawcett, 58, from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, was pottering around in the garden on April 20 minding her own business when suddenly she felt a small cut on her right foot from rubble.
After several days she was diagnosed with necrotising fasciitis following days of swelling and agony and having originally been diagnosed with cellulitis.
Necrotising fasciltis is a rare life-threatening disease that can occur if a wound gets infected.
Louise’s memory faded following three days of surgery as doctors were forced to remove the bug from the infected tissue.
After weeks in hospital including six operations and a skin graft from her thigh she was allowed home but had to learn how to walk again and is on crutches.
Louise believes she caught the bug from soil in her garden which got into her blood stream through a tiny cut she got on her foot.
She said: ‘It was swollen quite a bit. I started to feel pretty unwell.
‘I’m unlucky to get it but lucky to be alive.
‘I can’t believe it happened somewhere so suburban as Chesterfield.’
Louise also recalled the moments spent in hospital where at one point she thought she would lose her leg.
‘They took me into a little room,’ she said.
‘The redness was creeping. It was changing before their eyes.
‘They thought I might lose my life or my leg.’
She now has a brace to support her ankle when she sits so it stays at 90 degrees.
She said: ‘I have to bathe my foot.
‘I can’t look at it. It doesn’t feel like my foot.
‘It feels like a mannequins foot.’
Louise had to postpone the launch of her business Sight Loss Solutions because of her ordeal.
She hopes to hold individual and group session and also support the carers of people who have experienced sight loss.
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