Lamb Chop & Kebab – My 20 year anniversary of surviving Necrotising Fasciitis
August is a special month for me. 
My son’s birthday is August 21st.
My dad passed away on August 30th.
Both significant events ~ on any scale.
There is another date … that is just as significant … in some ways.
That would be the 19th of August … or the 18th if you are in the northern hemisphere, which is where I was when this date became … “significant”.
London, August 1998 … 18 months into my overseas experience or “OE” to use a New Zealand colloquialism. I experienced a life full of fun, friends, travel and a fair bit of partying to be fair.
In fact when I got ‘sick’ my lifestyle at the time possibly didn’t help with the rapid turn of events! I had been in Ireland for a 2 week holiday with friends and there will be no denying the drinking, general shenanigans and late nights that happened throughout the duration of that trip! I ended up getting a really nasty strep throat and put on antibiotics … penicillin to be precise.
Fast forward to the 18th and instead of ‘living the dream’, I had the lead role in an ill fated reality of a living nightmare.
A small unobtrusive round red spot appeared on my right thigh, I only noticed it when I went to the loo at work that afternoon. I gave it a prod and a poke (as you do) and thought .. ‘hmm .. that’s weird’ then completely forgot about it and carried on with my day. That afternoon though, getting off the tube to walk home to our flat in Willesden Green, my thigh started pulsating … a slow and continuous throbbing that failed to ease.
Within 4 hours I was in bed spiking fevers well over 40 degrees with sweat pouring out of me, only to find myself 10 minutes later huddling in the foetal position under many blankets in my bed with my teeth chattering, cold to the bone. This pattern continued for hours … flatmates stood guard around my bed, looking worried, unsure of what to do or how to help apart from keeping me comfortable and getting me what I asked for … water when I was hot and more warmth when I was cold.
And then there was the pain … oh the pain … I can’t even begin to explain. By this stage my small round red spot was the size of a bread and butter plate … red/purple in colour and really fucking weird. And painful.
The next 12 hours were a blur … flatmates called a GP who arrived around midnight and mis-diagnosed me with boils that had burst on the inside of my thigh – he gave me penicillin and carried on his merry way! Meanwhile I got through the night with laboured breathing, fevers, chills and incredible intense pain every time I moved. I had to get up and go pee because of all the water I was drinking … but then came the walk of terror down the hall to the toilet as by this stage I was hallucinating due to fever … the walls were literally bulging – figures stretching out of a seemingly flat space towards me as I slowly shuffled past.
The boys in our flat got home from night shift in the underground around 5am .. I heard them, got up and shared a coffee & spliff in the kitchen trying desperately to ease the pain … I remember one of them saying in that distinctive South African tone “what has happened to your leg Lisa?” … the question sounded clipped, sharp and official. “Boils apparently” … a flash of the leg … gasps of horror and flickers of doubt passed their eyes followed quickly by warmth and reassuring smiles.
A doctors visit early that morning resulted in “no idea what this is you need to go to the hospital” … luckily one of our mates had a van with his job as a glazier and dropped me off at Central Middlesex Hospital A&E. His words, as I crawled out of the front seat in agony … “Hey Macca … you don’t look too flash aye … make sure you splash out and get a mini cab home when you get out of here aye?”
I did leave that hospital … it just happened to be 10 days later and rather than a mini cab, I was in an ambulance being transported to Charing Cross hospital.
But first things first and I better fast track the facts otherwise we’ll be here for hours.
Analysing my memory of this time, I can best describe my recollection of events as a snapshot of photos etched forever in my brain, some blurry, some with sharp detail – but all bundled into a pivotal moment in time for me.
Figured I’d write the next 23 days how I remember them … by snapshot.
A&E
Hours ticking by painfully (no pun intended) on the boring white wall clock … waiting
Australian nurse, big smile
Suggests some bizarre sounding ‘bug’
Blanked the thought … didn’t understand her suggestion
Dr Alan James (I’m gonna call him Dr Hotness)
Hottest Doctor Ever …
Knew he was too good to be true …
That same bizarre sounding ‘bug’ … ~ Nectorising Fasciitis
Flesh Eating Bug
What the ACTUAL fuck?
I mean seriously … you’ve got to be bloody joking
Pen line drawn around the raging rash on leg
Needle in, needle out – no ‘fluid’ – no pain from my perspective in watching that happen
Shit was getting real
IV Antibiotics x heaps
That didn’t work
(I found out later that penicillin was essentially ‘feeding’ the bug)
Dr Hotness talks to the on call consultant who said no to surgery and instructed more IV antibiotics …
Dr Hotness ignores Mr Consultant and orders me to be taken into theatre
We meet Mr Consultant en route
He was all huffy puffy grumpy pumpy …
Dr Hotness whips back sheet and shows him my leg
Instant change of attitude, dynamics changed and Mr Consultant is scrubbing up alongside Dr Hotness
In a wee room, lights out
SHIT’S GETTING REAL!
Woke in an isolation room with people all around me
Machines beeping … face mask with oxygen on … feeling so very aware and incredibly peaceful ..
People looking panicked, the beeping is getting louder and faster but I am still ultra calm …
Dr Hotness is back at my side, holding my hand and looking me in the eyes
(Swoon … yes even in that state I had a slight swoon!)
“We didn’t get it all Lisa” he tells me … “we have to go back in”
Within the chaos of machines being unhooked, concern and angst on faces
Doors smashed open by the foot of my bed being run through corridors, doors bursting open in alarm …
There was no being put to sleep in a wee room this time round … this I noted
I was straight into theatre, transferred before I could blink onto the operating table
And put to sleep knowing and feeling in every part of my being … that this shit was serious and I might not wake up
Beeping …. heavy lids, can’t open them … so tired
Beeping …
ICU
Open eyes see Nicki sitting to my left … looking at me, tears streaming down her face
“Hi” I say … followed by “I’m really sorry but I’m really tired” and …. I am gone again
Physio dude getting me out of bed in ICU
Me screaming in agony at him
Nurses running back into room yelling “It’s not ‘just’ a leg infection” …
Days of life support
WARD
Isolation room on ward
Days of morphine
Flashes of memory of people visiting me but I was never quite sure
The morphine … no one listening to me that I wasn’t handling it
Ripped the lines out of my neck myself
Panic alarms … people rushing … freaking …
Dr Hotness appears again asking … “What’s wrong Lisa? What’s going on?”
He listened … we got it sorted … different meds … more pain but I could ‘feel’ most importantly in my brain
Healing started then
Flowers delivered that I wasn’t allowed in my room
8 general anaesthetics in first 8 days .. post ‘major surgery’ … that was just to change my dressings
Spoke to my doctor brother in reception – they wheeled my bed out to the phone
He sounded very serious and apparently I was lucky to be alive
I didn’t think it was that bad, thought I’d be sweet to go back to the flat soon …
An ambulance ride! FINALLY! I’m on my way to Charing Cross Hospital …
CHARING CROSS HOSPITAL (SKIN GRAFT TIME!)
Skin graft day – familiar face, surgeon who knew my brother and who I’d met at Waikato …
First time dressings removed without a general anaesthetic
Over 2 hours of screaming, pain, pethidine, gas, hyperventilating
“It looks really good Lisa, pink, healthy – healing well” …
I knew I had lost a large chunk of my leg but …
I looked down, straight through where my thigh used to be and saw …
the white hospital sheet below with a slab of red raw roast leg off to the right
Internal screaming
External sobs and hyperventilating
A sharp and immediate thought of taking my own life – I couldn’t live like this …
Left alone with a sheet over the ‘injury’
Alone … alone … alone …
A wee peek under the sheet to check if what you THOUGHT you had seen was real
It was and I’m still alone …
Hospital photographer – taking photos of my leg, I’m naked … completely naked striped bare in more ways than one
Inconsolable sobbing … I am taken into surgery … again …
It’s another day and I see my leg again … I am even pleasantly surprised based on what I last eyeballed
Now my right leg looks like a vacuum packed piece of roast lamb
And my left leg is in FUCKING AGONY (WTF?) and bandaged up to the max
Wasn’t it my RIGHT leg that was the issue here?
Yes but thanks to my LEFT leg donating skin … I had a graft of my own skin to cover the 40x50cm wound on my right leg!
It was now that my legs were nicknamed “Lamb Chop” and “Kebab”
My right vacuum packed leg looked like an uncooked lamb chop (on an obscurely larger scale)
The left leg reminiscent of donor kebab – where the meat is sliced thinly off a large hunk of rotating meat in the kebab shop window …
(Never did eat another one of those kebabs …)
Mum and Dad arrive from New Zealand … they both cry when they see my leg
I’m not used to seeing my Dad cry … it was another reality check for me
I had to learn to walk again – it started with a zimmer frame
I was told when I graduated to crutches I could be released from hospital
So I pushed myself … and achieved
Instead of the estimated 6 weeks in hospital I was out in 3 weeks and 2 days
Tenacity? Stubbornness? Resolve? Yes … that would be fair to say
My OE ended here … the misconceived idea I had of getting out of hospital and back to work? Well that wasn’t going to happen. Little did I know just what a long road of healing, recovery and reconstruction I had ahead of me.
I flew back to NZ with mum and dad a week or so after leaving hospital. I left my life, my friends my ‘normal’ up until that stage … I was absolutely devastated. My flatmates and friends were at Heathrow when I departed, the memory still pains my heart.
I want to acknowledge all of the UK whanau who supported, loved and cared for me ~ well before I got sick … when I was still a ‘whole leg’ Macca … coz when I became sick, that love and support trebled … I had people at my bedside more often than not, sitting with me, crying with me, laughing with me (and at me at times … which was important ~ keeping it real helps you heal!), bringing me Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. One nearly passed out when he saw my leg without the vacuum pack wrapping … and another asked the nurse if she could stay while I had some ‘procedure’ like a dressing change coz she was fascinated with the goriness of it all. Thank you to you all for your unconditional love and support – 2o years ago and still with me, supportive as always today, lucky for me! You all played a major part in my recovery and in my mental well-being and I honour you all.
So there I was ‘home’. Back in New Zealand ~ back to Waihi Beach to recuperate at mum and dads … I had left Waihi just 18 months earlier with a backpack, huge smile and matching legs. I returned with a backpack and a couple of suitcases … a “thank god I’m alive but cripes I’m in pain” smile and legs that no longer resembled anything familiar. By this stage lamb chop could also have gotten away with being known as “shark bite” … and I have used that answer when asked what had happened to my leg … but that’s another story for another day.
My rehabilitation took a couple of years … it was a good 6 months before I could walk without crutches, there was months of wearing full length pressure stockings, lymphatic massage, reconstructive surgeries and on it went.
I wrote an article that was published in NEXT magazine in April 2000 about my experience and that was both therapeutic and healing … but the reality is, it took many years for me to come to grips with and accept the ‘new me’.
There was a 70% mortality rate for necrotising fasciitis back in 1998. I found that out after. I also found out that when Dr Hotness had come into my room to tell me “we didn’t get it all Lisa”, not only was the disease spreading, but my left lung and liver had both collapsed and I was bleeding heavily internally. My body was shutting down … organ by organ, overcome with the strain of fighting this foreign element.
Now … 20 years down the track, I can reflect without anger, hurt, fear or flashbacks of pain. I appreciate how lucky I am to be here after an incredibly close encounter. And to acknowledge 20 years of lamb chop and kebab, I was blessed to be joined by several friends who were with me in London when this all happened back in 1998. We got together at Waihi Beach on my anniversary weekend for a couple of nights of laughter, memories, fun, food and wine! Had the worst hangover in about 20 years on the Sunday I might add … but it was all worth it and I am so grateful to those who were able to be part of the weekend and to those who weren’t able to make it but were there in spirit. Thank you all so much.
So there we have it … a little story about lamb chop and kebab. If there was to be a moral of this blog I think it would be that sometimes shit happens … shit happens that you have no control over. How you roll with it when said shit hits fan though, is absolutely up to you ~ there is no right or wrong answer but a little humour goes a long way!
Macca ~ August 25th 2018
