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Exploding Granny!

Battling a flesh-eating bug had left me with unexpected problems...


Published by: Philipa Cherryson & Amy Thompson
Published on: 19th May 2011

My head was fuzzy from the gas, my mouth felt like sandpaper, and my body ached. But at last, it was all over.
‘How are you feeling, love?’ asked my hubby, Brian, 61, flashing me a warm smile.
‘Like I’ve been hit by a bus,’ I croaked, as he handed me a glass of water. No one wants to go into hospital for an operation, but I knew this was worth it. I’d had problems with irregular periods for years, and had finally had an hysterectomy to sort it out.
I already had three children, Tony, Joanne and Trudy. Tragically, Tony had died in an accident when he was 18, but the girls were grown up, they even had kids
of their own.
So I wasn’t going to miss out on being a mum – just the constant pain!
After a few days in hospital, I was sent home. Everything seemed to be healing nicely but, laying in bed later that day, I noticed a small, black mark the size of a 10p piece just above the scar on my belly.
‘Brian, what’s that?’ I asked, pointing it out to him.
‘Looks like a bruise,’ he shrugged. ‘You’re bound to have a few after being cut open.’
I nodded but, as the hours ticked by, the skin on my stomach started to feel like it was burning. Reaching for a hand mirror by my bed, I held it up so I could see my wound properly.
‘Oh my God!’ I gasped, in horror. The tiny mark was now a massive patch stretching across my tummy from hip to hip. I looked like I’d been kicked by a horse!
‘I don’t feel right,’ I told Brian. ‘My skin’s really hot.’
He called my GP, but the doctor wasn’t worried. ‘Just keep an ice pack on it,’ he said. ‘It’s just some bruising. Perfectly normal after a major operation.’
His words did little to put my mind at rest, though, especially when Brian had to stay up with me all night, changing my ice pack every half hour. By morning I was in agony, and was rushed to the hospital’s A&E department.
‘It’s all right, love,’ Brian’s voice sounded muffled and distant as I slipped in and out of consciousness. My entire body was shaking, and I’d broken out in a cold sweat.
What’s going on?!
Next thing I knew, everything went black…
When I came round, I felt like I’d travelled back in time to four days before, when I’d woken up from my op, except this time the pain was excruciating!
It wasn’t just in my stomach either, my right thigh felt like it was being prodded with a red-hot poker. 
‘What’s happened?’ I wept.
‘You caught a flesh-eating bug called necrotising fasciitis,’ my doctor explained. ‘There’s no cure for it. We had to cut away the infected tissue in your stomach, and use skin from your thigh to graft over the open wound.’
I stared at him in horror, then I looked down at the thick bandages covering my belly.
‘A flesh-eating bug?!’ I repeated in disbelief. Disgusting images of maggots and insects chewing through my flesh from the inside-out flashed through my mind.
Of course it wasn’t actually like that, it was bacteria that had done the damage…
‘So the ugly black mark that had stretched across my stomach hadn’t been a bruise at all – it was the infection spreading?’ I checked.
He nodded.
The operation to remove the infected skin had left me with a massive chunk of flesh missing from my stomach. When the nurses changed my dressing, I felt utterly sick.
What should’ve turned into a neat scar from my hysterectomy was now a sunken, angry, red wound that looked like I’d been attacked by a shark!
If I thought the worst was over, though, I was wrong.
‘You’ll need to put on a lot of weight,’ the doctor told me. ‘We need to stretch excess skin from the top of your stomach over the section that’s missing.’
Was he joking? My whole life I’d been fit and healthy, working full-time at a dry cleaner’s and raising kids, all the time keeping the house clean and tidy. Now I was being told to deliberately ruin the figure I’d worked so hard to keep!
Once home, I ate everything in sight. ‘It’s like I’m on an anti-diet,’ I told Brian, shovelling in cakes and crisps. It took me five months to put on the 2st I needed for my op.
‘I’ll go back to normal after this, won’t I?’ I asked my doctor.
‘You’ll always have a flat stomach,’ he reassured me. ‘And once you go back to your normal diet, the weight will drop off.’
Only, after four hours in theatre to have the flab stretched over the missing chunk, I wasn’t straight back on my feet. I had to stay bent for two months, to make sure the skin didn’t tear apart.
‘I’m like a little old granny,’ I said to Brian, as I shuffled about.
‘It’ll all be over soon,’ he smiled.
Before I knew it, I’d spent a year in and out of hospital. But even when my stomach had healed, it didn’t snap back as it should have.
With all my operations and change in diet, I’d been left with too much scar tissue and a condition called diverticulitis, which affected my bowels. For days I’d be constipated, then I wouldn’t be off the toilet for 24 hours straight!
I had to have part of my bowel removed in yet another op, but even that didn’t help.
After five years of hospital appointments and operations, I was left with trapped wind that doctors can’t get rid of, which leaves my stomach bloated and rock hard.
What’s more, I can clear any room in seconds with the gas that rumbles out of me!
‘You’ll have to watch what you eat,’ I was advised.
At home, my family were so supportive but,   as I trumped my way through the house, Brian was always making excuses to nip out to the kitchen to make another cuppa to avoid the smell.
‘Sorry!’ I’d call after him, my face beetroot. ‘I can’t help it.’
I looked like I was eight months pregnant. Truth be told, I was simply a gassy granny.
Nothing can be done about my condition. I’m gradually learning to live with it, although I still have days when it gets me down.
Doctors aren’t even sure if I can fly on a plane – they’re concerned my stomach could explode because of the reduced air pressure.
The main thing is I’m alive. I’ve survived being cut open, eaten, stretched and stitched back again. That’s nothing to feel deflated about.
Doreen Howard, 57, Feltham, London