Carolyn went to get a glass of water, woke four weeks later with a massive hole in her chest.

It was a seemingly uneventful Monday afternoon. Carolyn Gower was feeling a little under the weather and was making her way to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. Four weeks later, she woke in ICU – with an A5-sized hole in her chest. She had contracted a mysterious flesh-eating disease that had nearly claimed her life. “The doctors had told my kids to say goodbye,” Carolyn reveals to . “No one expected me to make it.” Carolyn underwent an astounding – and lifesaving – 15 surgeries to remove that had slowly chewed away at her body. The 61-year-old grief counsellor, from Ballarat, northwest of Melbourne, has spent the past seven months learning to walk and talk again. But she still has a long way to go. On March 14, 2023, Carolyn woke up with an odd feeling in her stomach. “I thought I had a tummy bug or something,” she says. She pulled up the duvet and spent the day resting. That afternoon she woke, still feeling crook, and decided to grab some water. That is the last thing she remembers. Two of Carolyn’s adult children went to her house about 5pm after they both were unable to get hold of their mum. “They found me in my bed, delirious with a fever, burning up – basically just not looking good,” Carolyn explains. Ambulance officers arrived and wasted no time in taking her to hospital. “They said I was going septic,” Carolyn says, revealing her organs had begun to shut down. Under lights and sirens, paramedics noted an alarming red rash on their patient’s chest – that seemed to spread as they watched. At hospital, emergency doctors immediately diagnosed Carolyn with the flesh eating disease . The bacteria had quickly taken hold of her body and had begun eating away at her chest. Doctors needed to operate immediately to stop it spreading. So serious was the illness, staff pulled Carolyn’s children aside and prepared them to say goodbye to their beloved mum. With every passing minute, the flesh-eating bacteria was digging deeper into her chest – and surgeons did not expect her to make it off the operating table. In theatre, the surgeons managed to remove the dead tissue and, remarkably, Carolyn pulled through. She was placed in an induced coma to help her body heal. Most cases of necrotising fascitiis are caused by an insect bite, but in Carolyn’s case doctors weren’t able to find the origin. Despite pulling through the initial surgery, Carolyn wasn’t out of the woods. A few days post-op, her kidneys began to fail and she was put on dialysis treatment to help maintain renal function. The next four weeks where a whirlwind. Carolyn was transferred from hospital in Ballarat to The Alfred in Melbourne. There, she underwent a further 11 surgeries, each to remove dead tissue as the bacteria continued to spread. Doctors were eventually able to eradicate the bacteria from her body, and they used skin from her thigh to form a graft on her chest. Two final surgeries were needed to stitch up a hole – the size of an A5 piece of paper – which spanned her neck, shoulder and chest. A month after being placed in an induced coma, the mum was finally brought around. Her children were by her side, quick to tell her the almighty fright she had caused. “At first when I woke up I didn’t realise the seriousness of it all,” Carolyn says. “But then I realised I couldn’t do all these things like walk.” Carolyn was discharged after a further four weeks in hospital. “As a result of having so many surgeries in such a short time and being in the coma I have had to re-learn a lot of things,” she explains. Back in the comfort of her home, she had rigorous physiotherapy to help her walk again, and speech therapy to assist her regain her voice. She continues to work on improving the strength in her hands and feet, which also suffered as a result of being comatose for such a long period. It has now been six months since Carolyn’s children discovered her delirious in her bedroom. She continues to push forward with her therapy and aims to get back to her physical strength pre-infection. “I have come a long way but I still have a long way to go,” she says, adding that her eyesight was also affected by the ordeal. “Seeing how hard the doctors worked to keep me alive and how wonderful the nurses and everyone else that cared for me and my family… it really helps keep me going.”

Link to the original story: https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/carolyn-went-to-get-a-glass-of-water-she-woke-four-weeks-later-with-a-massive-hole-in-her-chest-c-12483856

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