Earlier this month, Kylie arrived at our Emergency Department (ED) with an infection in her foot/ankle that got into her blood stream and bones.

The ED team acted quickly, recognising that the infection was life-threatening and Kylie needed a below the knee amputation to save her life.

‘It didn’t take much thinking. Although extremely upset and emotional I told them to take my leg, I wanted to live.

‘Three weeks on, I’m adjusting to life in a wheelchair until my leg heals enough to be fitted with a prosthetic.’

After leaving Canberra Hospital, Kylie will move to University of Canberra Hospital, our specialist rehabilitation hospital, where she’ll learn how to live with a missing limb. Kylie says she’s looking forward to ‘learning all sorts of new skills so I can be independent again and lead a fulfilling life’.

‘A lot of my friends can’t understand how happy I am, telling me how depressed they’d be if they were in my shoes. But I don’t look at it that way, all I can see is I’m alive, no longer in pain, I have a life to look forward to and I can still do everything I want to do in life, just maybe a little differently.

‘I’ll be forever grateful to the ED staff for their quick recognition of the situation and action to contact emergency specialists who were fantastic and so compassionate when dealing with me and my father and performed the surgery that saved my life.

Kylie says she’s also appreciative of ‘the doctors and nurses of ward 4A, plus the physios, endocrinologists, social workers, even the staff who deliver and collect the dinner trays and the tea ladies.

‘They’re just such lovely people and so friendly. They all know my name now and always greet me warmly, and ask how I’m going.

‘It’s made a traumatic episode in my life so much more bearable knowing these people genuinely care for my well-being and not just “doing a job”.’

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