NEWS: Australia
Australian woman undergoes 36 surgeries and had both feet amputated after a mosquito bite in Nigeria.

52-year-old Aus­tralian, Stephe­nie Rodriguez, recount­ed her bit­ter expe­ri­ence with mos­qui­toes in Nigeria.

The sin­gle mom and dig­i­tal entre­pre­neur shared how she had both feet ampu­tat­ed and endured an 18-month-old night­mare when she con­tract­ed cere­bral malar­ia from a mos­qui­to bite while vis­it­ing Lagos.

In a report from the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald, she said she trav­eled to Lagos in 2019 to speak at a busi­ness meet­ing for trav­el offi­cials. She said dur­ing the ral­ly, she and guests were called to gath­er out­side for a pho­to­shoot next to a pool of stand­ing water. She said it was while she was there that she was bit­ten three times by a mos­qui­to on her left ankle.

Armed with enough bug spray, Rodriguez said she duti­ful­ly doused her­self with bug spray but did not take any anti-malar­ia med­ica­tion due to the bad reac­tion she expe­ri­enced when she resumed it. a.

“The orga­niz­ers asked me to go out for a pho­to­shoot with the del­e­gates. They had drones and vox pops. It was filmed next to a pool of stand­ing water. It was sun­set. It was then that I believe I was bit­ten three times by a mos­qui­to on my left ankle, ”she said.

Days lat­er, after fly­ing to India, Rodriguez said she was start­ing to feel tired and uncom­fort­able, but dis­missed the feel­ing, describ­ing it as “out of char­ac­ter” and “in addi­tion to the time dif­fer­ence”. It was while arriv­ing in Boston that she had to be rushed to hos­pi­tal after falling ill at the air­port and hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty eat­ing and drinking.

She was rushed to Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where an infec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist had con­firmed Rodriguez had cere­bral malar­ia. By then she had fall­en into a coma. Accord­ing to doc­tors, Rodriguez had only a 2% chance of sur­vival after Arte­sunate — a drug used to treat severe malar­ia — sent her into sep­tic shock and organ failure.

In a last ditch effort to save his life, doc­tors used vaso­pres­sor drugs to redi­rect blood flow from his limbs to his vital organs.

“It was the last trick of the bag, and they warned my fam­i­ly that if I sur­vived there would be col­lat­er­al dam­age. The vaso­pres­sors took away my feet and hands, the most dis­tant parts of my heart, and like frost­bite, the areas with­out blood and oxy­gen began to die. she said.

The drugs made her feet and hands black from the necro­sis and at one point she saw her own toe fall into her hand.

“It was awful, absolute­ly awful. Com­plete­ly unimag­in­able, ”she said.

After being flown back to Aus­tralia, the doc­tor advised Rodriguez to under­go an above-knee ampu­ta­tion with mul­ti­ple fin­gers. Hor­ri­fied by the thought, Rodriguez said she put the pro­ce­dure on hold and instead opt­ed to under­go mul­ti­ple skin grafts and surg­eries to see if her con­di­tion improved.

Even­tu­al­ly she had to have her remain­ing toes ampu­tat­ed and slow­ly real­ized that she could­n’t push it back.

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