WARNING: CONTAINS DISTRESSING IMAGERY
A 41-year-old mum has been forced to have her legs and a hand amputated after doctors mistook her sepsis for asthma.
Lydia Galbally was suffering with a chesty cough and shortness of breath, but health professionals diagnosed her with asthma and lung infections when in fact there was something much worse wrong with her.
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She contracted pulmonary tuberculosis, acute pneumonia and sepsis, and her condition drastically worsened. Once she was taken to hospital she also suffered gangrene to her hands, nose and feet, and then went into septic shock.
After spending 11 days in a coma, she remarkably recovered, but surgeons had to amputate her legs and hand in order to stop the infection.
Lydia and her husband Dan are currently seeking legal advice over the way she was treated.
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Dan told The Sun that her chances of recovery were not initially thought to be high, but she recovered 'against all odds'.
After spending eight weeks in Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire, she was eventually allowed to return home.
However, after the infections she had had - specifically the tuberculosis - Lydia now has not got full capacity in her lungs anymore.
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Dan is now crowdfunding to get some prosthetics made for Lydia so that she and her two children, aged nine and 11, can live as normally as possible again.
He said: "Despite the clearly devastating and traumatic events of the last seven months, it is important to me to be able to tell you that Lydia has been incredibly brave and outstandingly strong-minded throughout.
"She has been and remains truly inspirational, and though she doesn't believe that about herself, she has shown what a truly remarkable person she is."
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The GoFundMe profile set up to raise money for the prosthetics has already raised more than £91,000 ($118,400) in just a matter of days. The aim is to raise £250,000 ($325,300).
Dan hopes that the money raised will buy some prosthetics to restore Lydia to her 'old self'.
Sepsis is the most common form of death from infection around the world and kills around 40,000 people each year in the UK.
The illness is trigger by an infection, which can be anything from urinary tract infections, skin infections, cellulitis, pneumonia, or appendicitis.
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It causes the body to overreact and the immune system begins to attack the rest of the body. That can lead to organ failure and septic shock, which is often fatal.
Featured Image Credit: GoFundMe