A routine finger prick turned deadly...By Cheryl Reed, 33
A drop of blood welled on my left index finger where I’d pricked it with a lancet.
Type 1 diabetes meant I had to monitor my blood sugar several times a day.
Only, this time, the following day, my finger looked angry and swollen. It was also oozing pus.
‘The site of finger pricks can get infected,’ my GP explained, prescribing antibiotics.
A week later, however, I felt so exhausted and achy, I couldn’t get out of the bath.
Alongside diabetes, I had arthritis, so assumed it was a flare-up of that — until I found
a throbbing lump the size of a tennis ball under my left arm.
Mum and Dad, who I was visiting, took me to A&E, where staff suspected the bacterial infection cellulitis.
‘Come back on Monday for tests,’ I was told.
But the next day I was in so much pain that Mum drove me home so I could see my regular rheumatologist.
I was admitted to hospital for intravenous antibiotics. But the lump grew bigger, turning purple, then black.
Suddenly, after doctors examined me again, everything became frantic.
‘This is life-threatening and you need emergency surgery,’ a surgeon warned. ‘If you survive the operation, you may not have a left arm when you wake up.’
When I came round in intensive care, I couldn’t see or feel my arm.
But it was still there. A nurse had to lay it on my stomach, heavily bandaged, to calm me down.
They’d put in a nerve block because, otherwise, the pain would have been unbearable.
It turned out I hadn’t had cellulitis. Instead it was necrotising fasciitis — a flesh-eating bug caused when strep A, a common bacteria which also causes a sore throat, gets into the bloodstream.
It was more likely to affect people like me who had diabetes or a weakened immune system.
Penicillin could beat it, but I’d been given an alternative antibiotic due to an allergy.
It took four operations to cut away the dead flesh and transplant tissue from my thigh to cover the wound. Then the trauma triggered the autoimmune disease lupus.
I had to take five months off my job, working on a retail website. I lost three stone and all my hair fell out. Despite physiotherapy, I was left with limited mobility in my left arm and had to learn to walk again.
The doctors had also taken tissue from my back, so bras didn’t fit properly any more. Plus I was left with kidney damage from the lupus.
I wondered whether anyone would ever love me with a withered arm. But two years on, a guy called Callum started working in my office and we dated.
After four years together, we’re marrying this December and I’ll be wearing a sleeveless gown. As Mum told me, my arm’s part of who I am and I shouldn’t be ashamed.