When Lily McGarry was rushed to hospital on 14 January, it was thought she was just suffering from flu-like symptoms.
However, the Cardiff University medical student ended up spending two weeks in a coma and woke up to be told all four of her limbs needed to be amputated, with her family and friends now raising money to support her.
The ‘kind, thoughtful, active and positive’ 23-year-old had been diagnosed with a ‘severe and aggressive’ infection and suffered two cardiac arrests.
Lily had meningococcal septicaemia, a bacterial infection that can lead to organ failure and even death if not treated promptly. The sporty student rapidly worsened into septic shock at the hospital.
Her family say she ‘fought for her life’ and thankfully began to show signs of recovery after two weeks in the coma.
Lily McGarry is described as ‘kind, thoughtful, active and positive’ (GoFundMe)
However, an MRI revealed multiple brain, spleen and liver infarcts ‘leaving the long-term effects uncertain’.
The infection caused severe blood flow issues and meant that after waking from her coma, Lily found out she had to undergo surgery to ‘shorten all four limbs’.
As her family raise money to ensure the ‘the best chance for recovery and the opportunity to pursue her dreams’, she has now been left a quadruple amputee ‘above her knees and through her elbows’.
“While this is a devastating situation, her strength and determination remain unshaken,” they write on GoFundMe.
At the time of writing, over £215,000 has been raised by over 5,000 people generously donating to support the student.
The fundraiser explains: “Before her illness, Lily was an avid swimmer, runner, and surfer, and these sports are essential to her well-being and happiness.
“The advanced prosthetics available through private companies will give her the mobility and independence to return to these activities.”
They hope to raise enough for prosthetic limbs. (GoFundMe)
They hope that this will not only help her physical recovery ‘but also allow her to reconnect with the passions that have always brought her joy’.
“Funds raised here will go directly towards prosthetics, adaptations to living environment, as well as the physiotherapy and rehabilitation necessary for Lily’s recovery,” they add.
Any extra money not directly used for Lily’s care are set to be donated to the charty Limb Power, supporting ‘amputees and individuals with limb impairments through physical activity, sport, and the arts’.
In a recent update, it is explained that just one prosthetic leg ‘exceeds £100,000’ as they are also undertaking adaptations to make Lily’s home accessible.
Thanking the thousands of donors, they added the goal has now been set to £250,000.
“This will allow us to support her rehabilitation across multiple areas—from essential equipment and therapies to long-term adaptations that will give her the best possible quality of life,” they explain.
You can donate to help Lily rebuild her life here.
Featured Image Credit: Go Fund Me
Topics: GoFundMe, Health, Charity
A karate student just thought she was feeling sore due to an intense class but later discovered she actually had a deadly disease.
Gemma Underwood had been to her regular class on 28 March when she woke up and brushed off the soreness as she says she’d often experience delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
But another day later and the 41-year-old couldn’t move her upper body, with severe pain in her shoulders and arms preventing her from getting out of bed.
The mental health ward manager said her arms ballooned as the muscles were tight.
“I thought I had just over done it a bit at karate but the pain was disproportionate to the workout,” she added.
And when she noticed her pee ‘looked like cola’, Underwood was rushed to A&E.
Gemma just thought it was due to the intensity of class. (Kennedy News and Media)
“I looked online to see if this was a symptom of any condition, it quickly alerted me to rhabdomyolysis,” she explained.
“It’s something that can happen to anyone and what doctors said was that I wasn’t hydrated enough while doing an intense workout. I should have been drinking more water before.”
Underwood then panicked as it ‘can be life-threatening’ but being ‘very scared’ gave her the motivation to go to hospital ‘because obviously I didn’t want to die’.
Blood tests confirmed she had rhabdomyolysis. The NHS says this potentially life-threatening condition is caused by the rapid breakdown of damaged muscle with the release of the intracellular muscle contents, including myoglobin, creatine kinase and various electrolytes, into the bloodstream and extracellular space.
Rhabdomyolysis can lead to a range of complications including kidney damage, organ failure and death.
Underwood ended up in hospital for five days where she was put on IV fluid and had a catheter fitted.
Having returned home, she now has to rest and keep hydrated as she added: “They said treatment can take a few weeks or a few months depending on complications.”
Gemma was put on IV. (Kennedy News and Media)
The gym-goer is out of danger but still feels sore and has been left ‘very drained’ by the whole experience.
Underwood says she can not exercise ‘at all’ for at least three weeks as she is now warning others to make sure they stay hydrated before working out
“It’s really important to know the symptoms, which are muscle pain, weak muscles and dark urine,” she added.
“Make sure you’re hydrated before any workout, it doesn’t matter how intense it is.”
Common signs and symptoms of rhabdomyolysis include: muscle pain, weakness and stiffness, dark urine, fatigue, nausea and vomiting and confusion.
Featured Image Credit: Kennedy News and Media
Topics: Health
A woman who believed she had winter virus was taken to hospital on Christmas Day after going to bed with pain in her side, ultimately resulting in the loss of both of her legs.
Beth Budgen, 46, woke up in the early hours of Christmas Day 2022 in immense pain and vomiting blue liquid.
Her sister, Andrea, called for help and got her to the hospital, where her health issues were diagnosed as flu and pneumonia.
As her organs were failing, the woman was put into a medically induced coma, recalling: “Andrea and Liza [her twin] came to the hospital, and it was all happening so fast. I’d been feeling a bit off on Christmas Eve and now, I was fighting for my life.”
She has been in and out of hospital since the diagnosis (Focus Features)
Doctors had first discovered that she was suffering from Strep A, which then led to sepsis.
Her condition continued to worsen, as she spent New Year’s Day in a coma, waking up to news six weeks later that she had sepsis and might lose her legs and hands.
Beth said: “I hadn’t spoken for six weeks, and my first word was: ‘Yay!’”
“My sisters were traumatised, they had been by my bedside, the whole time, willing me to pull through. Andrea had kept a diary, which was later really helpful for me, to fill in the missing pieces.
She had both of her legs amputated (Focus Features)
Beth was transferred around eight hospitals in total, as in April 2023. She had a thumb and some fingertips removed, though surgeons were able to save her hands, with a gruelling physio programme helping her make an incredible recovery.
In February this year, she had surgery to remove her legs below the knee and get work done on her damaged lung.
Describing having her legs amputated as a ‘traumatic’ experience, she said that it ‘happened for a reason’, as she aims to raise awareness for sepsis.
Beth is determined to raise awareness for sepsis (Focus Features)
Now finally out of hospital, she is walking unaided with her prosthetic legs, while Liza and Andrea, who have supported her, are raising fund for further treatment and equipment needed for her day-to-day life.
The Brit explained that the year has been ‘incredibly challenging’, stating: “When I’m well enough to work, I would like a role supporting amputees and sepsis survivors.
“This Christmas, the best present will just be to have my family around me. My own story of survival is a true Christmas miracle.”
You can donate to Beth’s fundraiser here.
Featured Image Credit: Focus Features
Topics: Health, UK News
A student tragically had to have limbs amputated after eating his roommate’s leftover noodles.
Resulting in a rare ‘freak accident’, the lad had no known allergies, was dosed up on all his childhood vaccinations, wasn’t a big drinker, smoked marijuana daily and went through two packs of ciggies a week.
But less than a day after scranning the food that had been left in the fridge overnight, he fell extremely ill.
Explained in the below (dramatized) video, the student ended up with a whole load of health complications leading to an eventual amputation of all of his limbs, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
According to the report, not long after eating the noodle dish, the patient – identified as ‘JC’ – had a severely high temperature, a pulse of 166 beats per minute, and had to be sedated.
He was so ill he had to be taken to the intensive care unit of another hospital by a helicopter for further treatment.
The report states: “The patient had been well until 20 hours before this admission, when diffuse abdominal pain and nausea developed after he ate rice, chicken, and lo mein leftovers from a restaurant meal.
“Five hours before this admission, purplish discoloration [sic] of the skin developed, and a friend took the patient to the emergency department of another hospital for evaluation.”
The story is explained in greater depth in that aforementioned YouTube video by ‘Dr Bernard’.
In the end, he had to have his legs amputated. (New England Journal of Medicine / YouTube/@Chubbyemu)
He noted the severe symptoms he was suffering from seemed likely to have been an aggressive bacterial infection. Less than 24 hours since eating, his kidneys had failed, and his blood started to clot.
When blood tests results came through, it was found he had a bacteria in his blood called Neisseria meningitidis – this isn’t meningitis, but meningococcaemia.
His immune system had started responding, as Dr Bernard explained: “It’s kind of like getting a cut on your skin – the bleeding stops eventually because of blood clot, then the area around the cut becomes swollen and warm.
“It is swollen because the blood vessels dilate so that more blood vessels can get to the area and the swelling is partly due to the fact that there is increase fluid and the warmth is the inflammation.
“But, when bacteria is present in the blood, the entire body’s blood vessels dilate, dropping then blood pressure, preventing oxygen from getting into the organs.”
The leftovers proved dangerous. (Getty Stock)
He continued: “Little clots [start to] form everywhere, as they get lodged into small blood vessels blocking blood flow. As his hands and feet become cold, they are starved of oxygen.”
The problem with all of this – well another serious problem – is that the tissue that is starved of blood starts to turn necrotic. The whole effect is called Purpura fulminans.
While he did stabilise, the tissue on his fingers developed gangrene, as did his legs down to his feet. He had to have parts of all 10 fingers amputated, as well as a bilateral below-knee amputations.
The bacteria that got into his food is known to spread through saliva.
It turns out his roommate had vomited after eating some of the meal the night before, unknown to JC.
Then, they discovered while he’d received his first meningococcal vaccine before middle school, he never had the booster shot recommended four years later when he was 16. Evidence suggests the food wasn’t good, which Dr Bernard describes as ‘a freak accident’.
However, ‘we’ll never know’ what caused the food to have that bacterium in it.
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Image/YouTube/ChubbyEmu
Topics: Health
A woman who was put into a coma woke up to the news that all four of her limbs would need to be amputated.
Amalie Henze told People she was managing her life with Crohn’s disease and had ‘been in and out of hospital’ with some frequency.
In October last year she felt unwell and thought it was a bowel obstruction, a symptom of Crohn’s, but then as she was admitted to hospital she started to experience other symptoms she previously hadn’t.
She said: “The main one was that I was getting weird cramping in my bladder. I knew something wasn’t right, so I looked at my mom and told her that I loved her.
“Moments later, when the nurse went to go take my blood pressure, they couldn’t get a read on me.
“That’s when they noticed my hand starting to turn purple and they both realized that I was going into septic shock.”
She hopes she can make a difference to other young amputees. (Instagram/@amalie.moira)
The woman then went ‘in and out of consciousness’ for a time, as she told People she ‘didn’t know about the sepsis or the septic shock until after I finally came out of the coma’.
Septic shock is a life-threatening condition where a person’s blood pressure drops to dangerously low levels after an infection, and the NHS says sepsis is a life-threatening condition where the immune system overreacts to an infection resulting in damage to the body’s tissue and organs.
Once doctors knew sepsis was on the table, doctors told Amalie they thought it would be best to put her in a medically induced coma to help her fight the infection.
About three weeks later after some ‘weird dreams’ she came out of the coma and knew something was wrong.
“I knew something was going on with my limbs because the doctors and nurses and my family were very conscious about not letting me see what my hands and feet looked like at that point,” she explained to People.
She would then be told that she’d need to have her hands and feet amputated, a moment she described as ‘overwhelming’ and ‘definitely a shock’.
She said: “I think the scariest part, though, was probably when I did see what one of my feet looked like at the time because I just remember looking down and saw dark black.
“It didn’t really make sense at the time, so it was definitely very frightening.
“But I found reassurance through my family and through the nurses and doctors telling me about prosthetics and how so many people are able to live their lives normally with their prosthesis.”
Amalie said she ‘had to relearn everything’ and her family being around to help her was incredibly important even though it was ‘super hard’ having to rely on them for so much.
Since then she’s been sharing videos of her life on TikTok as she found comfort in other creators who’d had stories similar to her own and hopes she can provide something similar.
She also said the site was a good place to share her story, and it has resulted in her being contacted by other people in similar situations.