Gardener bitten by insect loses legs and fingertips

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A keen gardener had both her legs and fingertips amputated after being bitten by an insect.

Susan Buttery, from Highworth, Wiltshire, developed sepsis and the flesh-eating disease necrotising fasciitis from a bite on her head.

She spent eight months in hospital and three weeks in an induced coma before being told doctors needed to amputate.

Mrs Buttery, said: "I had really to speak to myself and say, 'well if they don't do it, I will die'."

She said at first she thought she was suffering from an allergy.

"I could feel a lump in the back of my head and I didn't really think anything of it," she said

"I thought, 'oh, an insect's just bitten me and it will go back down again'."

When her health deteriorated she was admitted to Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

"Sixty operations, it ended up as, to have the dead skin stripped away every couple of days because it was eating into the skin," she said.

"Then gangrene set in and they started to say that the toes have got to go, then the feet."

Eventually, she was told doctors would try to "save as much of the leg as possible" and her legs were amputated from the knee down.

"They said, 'we don't know whether you'll ever be able to walk again'," she said.

"It was crushing to think that somebody that I'd been I was not going to be any more."

The 68-year-old has made a good recovery. She uses prosthetic legs and goes to the gym twice a week.

Mrs Buttery has spoken publicly about her experience for the first time since she was admitted to hospital in 2013.

She said it had been an "uphill struggle" but she still loves her garden and gardening.

"I am very aware now of different insects," she said.

"I'm also very aware that if I cut my finger or I get scratched on the roses that these areas get treated straight away."