A mum of two from the UK is asking to be amputated after she lost half her thigh and endured 55 surgeries after getting scratched during a fishing trip.
The woman got scratched by a fishing line in 2019 during a trip with her brother, Martyn and got infected during the process. Now she’s begging doctors to remove her right leg altogether.
“I’m sick of spending my life in [the] hospital,” Michelle Milton, 40, lamented to SWNS.
During the fishing trip, a portion of the nylon line in her front pocket pierced her right thigh after she slipped on some rocks on the first day of the excursion.
Milton’s leg swelled up and she developed a fever, so she went to Basildon University Hospital in Essex four days later.
After 55 procedures, including skin grafts, wound irrigation, and tissue removal, Milton has a gaping hole in her inner leg and says she is highly resistant to antibiotics.
“I never thought a fishing line could cause so much damage,” said Milton, who lives in Essex. “Every day is filled with agony, and I’ve begged them to take [my leg] off. They just keep cutting away at” it.
Woman begs to be amputated after scratch she sustained during fishing trip led to 55 surgeries
She says medics gave her antibiotics on her first visit to the emergency room, in August 2019.
When the wound began to bring out pus, doctors decided to X-ray her leg and then she was given antibiotics.
Woman begs to be amputated after scratch she sustained during fishing trip led to 55 surgeries
“They had no idea what was going on,” Milton said of her doctors. “The pain grew, and the infection kept spreading across my leg. They just [kept] discharging me and prescribing me antibiotics.”
Then medics performed a washout, a procedure to clean the open wound, in December 2019.
Milton said this left her injury wide open.
Over the next four years, she underwent four skin grafts, 30 washouts, and 21 debridements to remove the damaged tissue.
“I can barely walk or sit down,” she moaned. “There’s going to be nothing left of me.”
In October, surgeons performed a washout of the wound and fitted the wound with a pump to suck out the pus even as doctors told her that the infection is spreading down Milton’s right leg making her constantly visit the hospital.
“I don’t know how much more I can take,” said Milton, the mom of a 17-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old son. “I haven’t been [a mom] in years. My mom’s been doing everything for my kids.”
“Nothing seems to work, none of the treatments help at all,” she said. “I can’t believe a simple scratch has left me like this.”