Michelle Wardrope nearly lost her life after tripping on her wet driveway, leaving her with a tiny cut. “I just thought it would need a few stitches, and everything would be fine after that,” the 44-year-old explained.
“But apparently I was wrong.”The Airlie Beach woman woke up in “excruciating pain” few hours after the cut below her right knee was repaired with six stitches at the Proserpine Hospital.
It was immediately apparent that something was seriously wrong when her partner, Ben Brown, drove her back to the emergency room. “Her leg just started to swell up and a really bad smell came from it,” Mr. Brown said. “It seriously smelled like death.” Ms. Wardrope had contracted gas gangrene, a rare and extremely deadly bacterial infection of the soft tissue.
Her 13-day coma at the Mackay Base Hospital in April included terrible hallucinations while medical professionals fought to preserve her life. “My partner informed me that my chances of survival were only 2%,” Ms. Wardrope stated. He was told to get ready for my funeral several times.
“It was scary to think I was that close to losing everything — not seeing my son again and not seeing my partner again.” Ultimately, in order to preserve her life, the physicians had to amputate her limb. Ms Wardrope regained consciousness to discover her right leg had been amputated from the hip. “I looked everywhere for it and couldn’t find it,” she claimed. “Then I was trying to work out how to call my partner to tell him that my leg was gone.”
Two months after slipping on her cement driveway, she still refuses to look at the wound where her leg used to be “I still have the phantom leg pains and stuff, so my brain still thinks it’s there,” she told me. Ms Wardrope was transferred to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in Brisbane for additional weeks of care after becoming stable.
Rare and unpleasant infection
Gas gangrene is an extremely rare infection, with fewer than 100 cases documented in Australia each year.
The bacterial illness is named after the foul-smelling gas generated when the body’s muscles die, which has long been connected with war wounds. Associate Professor Krispin Hajkowicz, a senior staff specialist in infectious diseases at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, stated that the hazardous bacteria, known as clostridium, may be found in any soil.
