Influencer lost vision and hearing after squeezing boil she thought was ingrown hair

Good Morning Britain presenters Kate Garraway and Ranvir Singh interviewed Christy Collins today, whose sepsis story is the stuff of nightmares.

It all started with a 'gumball'-sized boil on her bikini line, which the 28-year-old influencer believed was simply to do with an ingrown hair.

Sat beside the ITV programme's resident medical expert, Dr Amir Khan, Collins began: "So on the Saturday night I got this like, boil lump-thing. I didn't think anything of it.

"Sunday morning I was in the shower just getting ready to go up to London, it started to puss-out, I squeezed it. Bad idea, because squeezing it just made it really worse."

She covered up the mess with a pimple patch and headed out to the city with her friends, but the soaring temperatures of August this summer only exacerbated the growing issue she was unaware of.

Christy Collins spoke about her horrendous experience on Good Morning Britain (ITV)

Christy recalled losing both her vision and sense of hearing.

"I had to grab my mate and be like, 'I need to sit down. I need chocolate, buy me water, it's the heat. It must be the heat'. It was so hot, early August. So I went home that day and just throughout the next few days it got progressively worse.

"On Tuesday I called the doctors and they prescribed me some antibiotics, but they [did] nothing, because usually within 24 hours you can tell if they've worked," she continued.

"I thought it was the heat because it was literally so hot and I was just trying to stay hydrated, but then I got to a point where I was, like, washing up a spoon and I was holding onto a side like, 'Oh my God I'm gonna faint'.

"It was so painful, I couldn't walk. It was Thursday so I'd had antibiotics for a full day. We just knew, like, my friend said, 'You're coming to the doctors, I'm taking you to A&E. Let's just go'. As soon as I got to A&E, I was rushed straight through. It was crazy, I'm still processing it because it's like trauma you know? It was wild."

The social media content creator described the boil as 'the size of an iPhone 16 Pro Max' at its worst, and by squeezing it she'd inadvertently caused sepsis to take hold.

Since having it surgically dealt with - doctors warned that waiting another day could've been fatal - Christy claimed she's lost all independence as her recovery continues.

"Every time I have a shower my mum's got a sandwich bag up my leg, holding the dressing in place making sure it doesn't get wet," she told Garraway and Singh.

Chipping in with his medical insight, Dr Khan went on to explain how sepsis 'can come from any infection', although it's uncommon to get it from an infected or inflamed hair follicle.

"What shaving around any hairy area can do is cause something called micro abrasions or tiny cuts in the skin. The skin is our first barrier against a lot of infections and those tiny nicks in our skin, we don't often see them. If the hair follicle gets inflamed, that softens the skin around that area and bacteria that normally live on our skin, particularly one called staphylococcus, can get underneath the skin and cause an infection and then this big abscess."

The type of abscess that Christy had 'always requires surgery', according to the doc.