A previously fit runner has been left with just one leg after succumbing to a rare “flesh eating” bug. Emma Doherty, 37, contracted a life-threatening infection called necrotising fasciitis while being treated for sepsis. Although she survived, an amputation was necessary and she now relies on a wheelchair for mobility.
Emma, who was living in London at the time, believes she caught the disease while she was in hospital and her immune system was low.
Necrotising fasciitis is a rare and life-threatening infection that can happen if a wound gets infected.
Also known as the “flesh-eating disease”, it infects soft tissue underneath the skin, most commonly on the legs.
It spreads quickly through the body and can result in death if not treated as soon as possible with antibiotics and/or surgery.
Emma, a previously-fit cross country runner, was given a less-than one percent chance of survival due to the infection.
Doctors told her mum to consider turning off her life support machine.
“It affected 85 percent of my body,” Emma explained. “The infection was moving through my body [so fast] the only way to stop it was to cut the [affected tissue] away.”
As a result surgeons removed the tendons from her left wrist, leaving Emma with severe nerve damage in the arm.
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Her left leg was also amputated, and skin grafts were taken from her stomach leaving the remaining skin there just two millimetres thick.
Now Emma lives in constant fear that even the slightest cut or injury could leave her internal organs exposed.
Despite this, she feels lucky to be alive as she almost didn’t survive being in a coma.
Her mum Marie Keane said: “I was shown pictures of her intestines and organs.
Her left leg was also amputated, and skin grafts were taken from her stomach leaving the remaining skin there just two millimetres thick.
Now Emma lives in constant fear that even the slightest cut or injury could leave her internal organs exposed.
Despite this, she feels lucky to be alive as she almost didn’t survive being in a coma.
Her mum Marie Keane said: “I was shown pictures of her intestines and organs.
“On the third day it was like a sickly green film and I asked what it was and they said it was the infection creeping up, and if it hit her major organs there’s nothing they could do.
“They put me under so much pressure to turn off the life support, but something in me kept telling me she’s still there, and there was no way I was letting her go.”
Two years on from her ordeal, Emma lives in Lancashire with her mum.
She undergoes one 30-minute physiotherapy session a week, which she says is not enough as she didn’t get the intense rehab she was promised during the pandemic.
Emma is now trying to raise money to buy a lightweight wheelchair, a hoist and ramp for the car, an anti stumble electronic prosthetic leg, hydrotherapy and private physio.
“I feel very let down,” she added. “I can’t propel myself in the chair because of my injuries and it’s so heavy my mum, who has recently had a knee replacement, can’t even lift it into the car.
“It can happen to absolutely anybody. Because I had sepsis, my immune system was down and I had an infection in the blood so it made me susceptible.”
To donate visit gofundme.com/f/sepsis-and-flesh-eating-bug-mutilated-4-life.
According to the NHS, symptoms of necrotising fasciitis include:
- Intense pain or loss of feeling near to a cut or wound
- Swelling of the skin around the affected area
- Flu-like symptoms, such as a high temperature, headache and tiredness
- Being sick (vomiting) and diarrhoea
- Confusion
- Black, purple or grey blotches and blisters on the skin (these may be less obvious on black or brown skin).
If you think you have necrotising fasciitis you should call 999 or go to A&E immediately.
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