Woman who caught flesh-eating bug in her garden has no memory of three-day hospital stay

A woman feels "lucky to be alive" after she caught a flesh-eating bug, which she believes she caught from her flower beds.

Louise Fawcett, aged 58, was pottering in the garden outside her home in slip-on sandals when she got a small cut on her right foot from rubble.

Louise has no memory of her three-day stay in the ICU, when surgeons fought to cut away the bug by removing the infected tissue.

After receiving a necrotising fasciitis diagnosis, having seven operations, and spending weeks in hospital, she is now learning to walk again at home.

Louise, a vision rehabilitation officer from Chesterfield, suspects she caught the bug from soil in her garden, which got into her blood stream through a tiny cut on her foot.

She said: "I must have got a tiny cut. I think I caught it from the soil. Mark, my husband, has been busy with our garden. It's full of rubble.

"I'm unlucky to get it, but lucky to be alive. I can't believe it happened somewhere so suburban as Chesterfield."

Louise didn't notice anything was wrong with her foot until the following day, on April 21, 2024.

She said: "It was swollen quite a bit. I started to feel pretty unwell.

"I couldn't wear shoes for dinner for Mark's birthday, and I couldn't put any weight on it."

She continued to feel unwell over the weekend and went to see her GP but was told it was likely cellulitis - a potentially serious infection - and was prescribed antibiotics.

She was told to keep her foot elevated and to come back if her symptoms continued.

Louise said: "The next morning I noticed the ankle looked like it had a port wine birthmark. It was very purple. I thought it was sepsis."

Mark, aged 59, a train driver, took Louise to Chesterfield Royal Hospital where she had some blood tests.

While waiting for the results, a nurse spotted her and realised her symptoms looked like the rare flesh-eating bug she had been studying the week before.

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Louise said: "They took me into a little room. The redness was creeping, it was changing before their eyes.

"They thought I might lose my life or my leg."

Louise was taken to surgery immediately to open her foot up and cut away at the flesh eating bug.

WARNING: Graphic image

She was then taken to intensive care for three days - but has no memory of this.

She had six operations to cut away at the bug, and a skin graft from her thigh in the following weeks, at Northern General Hospital in Sheffield.

Louise was discharged on May 16, and has now started physio.

She has a pair of crutches to aid her walking.

She said: "They told me it healed. I was crying with joy. I'm here. I'm glad to be alive."

"But I can't look at it. It doesn't feel like my foot - it feels like a mannequin’s foot."

Louise had to postpone the launch of her business Sight Loss Solutions because of her ordeal, but has launched it this month (June 2024).

She hopes to hold individual and group session and also support the carers of people who have experienced sight loss.