‘Half of me didn’t believe it’: Woman, 28, who thought she was coming down with a fever wakes up from a coma ten days later without her legs and fingers
- Woman’s legs and fingers were amputated after she contracted meningococcal
- Juttima Chinnasri, 28, spent ten days in a coma after waking with deadly rashes
- She is now learning to adjust to life in a wheelchair, saying she’s lucky to be alive
A young woman who lost her legs and fingers to meningococcal disease thought she was just catching a cold.
Sydney woman Juttima Chinnasri, 28, went to bed early one night in October last year, concerned that her fever was a sign on an oncoming flu.
When she woke up the next morning, she was covered in blotchy, dark rashes and was rushed to hospital.
Juttima Chinnasri (rash) went to bed one night in October with flu symptoms and woke up the next morning covered in a deadly rash
The young woman’s body was coated in black splotches, diagnosed as meningococcal disease, and comatose for ten days (pictured)
Doctors at St George Hospital told Ms Chinnasri she was ‘very, very sick’, with blood testing confirming she had meningococcal B.
She was placed in a coma as hospital staff worked desperately to save her life.
When she woke up after ten days, she was told her fingers and legs had to be amputated.
‘Half of me didn’t believe it,’ she told The Daily Telegraph.
‘I hoped there was another way out so I did not have to lose my legs and hands.’
She would spend the next three months in hospital, learning to live without her extremities.
Wheelchair-bound, she has since returned to her parent’s south Sydney home in Kogarah.
Ms Chinnasri says she is lucky to be alive, as meningococcal B kills one in every ten sufferers
Ms Chinnasri (pictured) is now learning to adjust to life in a wheelchair after her legs were amputated
Despite not being able to walk, she says she still considers herself very lucky.
‘I just try and think I am lucky I’m still here, it could have been way worse,’ she said.
One in every ten people who are diagnosed with meningococcal B – the most common of the five strains of the disease – die.
Meningococcal Australia’s Eliza Ault-Connell previously told Daily Mail Australia timing is key when it comes to surviving meningococcal disease.
‘We’ve seen people at breakfast be dead by dinner, you literally see rashes develop before their eyes.’