A trip of a lifetime turned into a nightmare for this couple.
THE trip of a lifetime turned into a nightmare for a couple — after one of them contracted a flesh-eating bug that ate his leg.
Ben Whiteside and girlfriend Anneka Shally, from the UK, had been teaching in Hong Kong and decided to round off their trip by backpacking around Asia.
But the adventure turned to horror after Ben was attacked by the deadly bug necrotising fasciitis, which ate away at his flesh and bone.
WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS BELOWw
The nightmare began during a two-trek to Tiger Leaping Gorge in China’s Yunnan Province where Ben, from Belfast, grazed his left knee.
A few days later the couple were on a 14-hour bus ride to Laos when Ben complained that the pain in his knee was worsening.
Ben and Anneka had been teaching in Hong Kong.Source:Supplied
As soon as they arrived in Luang Prabang, a town in the north of the country, Ben saw a doctor who said the graze on his knee was infected and sent him home with antibiotics.
The following day, Ben woke up vomiting and suffering from a high temperature.
Anneka, 24, explained: “I don’t know exactly what his temperature was, as I had no thermometer, but he was boiling and very sweaty.
“I left him to rest, but the day after he was still being sick. We thought he was reacting to the antibiotics.”
They had decided to round off their trip by backpacking around Asia.Source:Supplied
The worried couple returned to the doctor who told them the infection was “controlled” and claimed the vomiting was down to a bout of food poisoning.
Anneka said: “We took his word for it. Ben had had a dodgy-tasting milkshake in our hotel a couple of mornings before, so we thought maybe it was bad milk.”
The following day, the 25-year-old felt better and the vomiting had stopped so Anneka left him to rest for a few hours and went out.
But when she returned things had taken a turn for the worse.
He nearly lost his leg.Source:Supplied
She revealed: “The top of Ben’s left thigh had swollen up, while his knee seemed to have gone back to normal.
“Rather than spread, the infection had moved up the leg — I knew it was serious then.”
The pair went to a local hospital but, after an X Ray, they fobbed him off with vitamin supplements to deal with the sickness.
“We knew it was an infection,” said Anneka. “And they just weren’t dealing with it. Nobody seemed to know what they were doing. It was terrifying.”
They went back to their hostel, but at 4am the following morning, Ben woke up in excruciating pain, saying he could feel something on the back of his leg.
Shining the light of her mobile phone on his leg, Anneka said what she saw was like something out of a horror film.
The flesh-eating bug ate his leg.Source:Supplied
She recalled: “The whole skin on that thigh was purple and black with this big bleeding wound in the middle. It was horrific.
“But I tried to keep calm, for Ben’s sake. It was the middle of the night, too — what could we do?”
Anneka texted her cousin Siobhan Glavy, a doctor in Dublin, who told her he had a nasty infection and needed intravenous antibiotics immediately.
By the morning, the bruising on his leg had spread further up his thigh and he couldn’t walk so the couple took a tuktuk — a small open car — to hospital.
Ben was given a bed with no bedsheets or pillow, hooked up to intravenous antibiotics and diagnosed with cellulitis of the leg.
At home, Ben’s mum Angela, hearing her son was ill, had booked the couple into a smart hotel.
As they couldn’t use the room, the hotel’s manager turned up at the hospital with clean bedding and pillows to make his stay more comfortable.
“I was so touched by that,” Anneka said. “I had nobody else at that point, it was just so terrifying.
“She advised me to get him to Bangkok, as the medical care there in Laos was too behind.
“The IV drip seemed to have slowed the infection down, but it was still spreading. I’d never seen anything like it.
“So I called Angela and told her we had to get Ben to Bangkok quick.”
Bangkok Hospital arranged to have Ben flown on a commercial airline but clearance issues meant the couple had to wait another 24 hours, with Ben’s leg getting worse with every passing hour.
And doctors secretly told Anneka that he would lose his leg.
They arrived at a hospital in the Thai capital on November 21 and were met by Angela, who had flown from Belfast to be with them.
“They did an MRI scan and whisked Ben off to surgery pretty much immediately”, said Anneka.
Doctors had little time to explain how severe the condition was but afterwards they explained he had contracted the rare flesh eating disease necrotising fasciitis.
If he hadn’t had surgery, he would have been dead within days.
He’s hoping to be home for Christmas.Source:Supplied
The infection had spread to his kidneys, but only just, so they hoped it could be flushed out with antibiotics.
He also had severe sepsis, where the entire body creates an inflammatory response to infection, which can prove fatal.
After the operation, on November 22, the surgeon showed the couple pictures of the operation.
“It was grim, I didn’t look at some of them,” Anneka said. “It was all open wounds, and he showed us where all the dead tissue had been removed.
“The doctor said Ben would probably be okay as he was young and strong, but his condition was critical.”
Ben responded well to treatment and, after four days, his kidneys were clear and the sepsis gone.
After 13 more days he was well enough to be flown home, but the bug had left his leg severely damaged as the bacteria had eaten right down to the bone.
He has since undergone seven operations to remove the dead tissue and is currently in Belfast’s Ulster Hospital after a series of skin grafts.
Now he’s hoping to return home for Christmas.
Anneka said: “Considering how sick he was, Ben rallied really well. He was incredible.
“The worse part for both of us was those few days in Laos because were completely in the dark.
“A doctor told me, away from Ben, that in Bangkok they would probably have to remove his leg. He was just saying what I knew Ben and I were both thinking, though — even if we didn’t say it.”
In a further blow, the couple were landed with a £30,000 medical bill because they didn’t have medical insurance.
They have now raised over £23,000 through as fundraising page.
A GoFundMe page to help with Ben’s medical costs has raised over £23k to date, and is at http://ift.tt/1QtjKZ7.
This story originally appeared on TheSun.
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