00:00When I was placed on life support, my chances of survival were less than 1%.
00:03The consultant who was looking after me at that point felt that I simply wasn't going to survive.
00:08And then through the course of the evening, tried a treatment that it was a recognised method of
00:13treatment in the US, but it hadn't come to England yet. But he felt that I was going to die,
00:17so we might as well try something. And he basically gave me just a huge amount of stuff.
00:22But it kept the strep at bay and it kept me alive. And then after about a week of being
00:27in Winchester,
00:27they said to me that they can't continue my care. And they said, look, we've got to move you to
00:31Salisbury. When I arrived in Salisbury, we were then told, obviously, that because of the nature of
00:35the illness, the strep, my legs were black at that point. My arms were black. Everything was dying
00:41because the strep was trying to get my heart to kill me. So the course of action was just to
00:46amputate left arm, amputate both legs and try and save the right arm, which was at that point pivotal
00:52to the chance of independent living. And then there was many, many surgical procedures on my face
00:58over the course of the next eight months to try and rebuild, excise the dead tissue from the end
01:03of my nose, my ears, my mouth, and just try and give me a chance of having a face really.
01:08I remember
01:08lying in Salisbury, having just had my left arm amputated and thinking to myself, what on earth is
01:14you know about this? What must my parents be feeling? You were more concerned for others.
01:22It was obvious that I was being looked after, but my family, well, they were literally watching
01:26bits being amputated, cut off.
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