A woman who woke up with a bug bite was forced to have her fingers and toes amputated after her organs shut down. Cathrine Abbott-Coetzee believed she had a relatively harmless mosquito bite but within two days, her health deteriorated and, after fainting, she was rushed to hospital.
The small bite caused terrifying complications, as Cathrine’s organs began to fail, causing dry gangrene – a condition where the tissue becomes dry and shrinks due to lack of blood flow and parts of the body turn black or a shade of blue or purple.
The side effect meant most of her fingers and toes were reduced to “short black stumps” – and four months after the bite, Cathrine had nine toes and seven fingers amputated. While she survived the scare and was given prosthetics for her fingers and shoe inserts for her toes, life had changed forever – with Cathrine’s mental health declining and her marriage breaking down as a result.
But now, having finally come to terms with what happened to her, Cathrine has been able to find love – and happiness – once more, and embrace her differences. “I can’t wish my life back,” Cathrine, now 60, told Need To Know. “I just want to be the happy person I used to be.
“One of the biggest breakthroughs I made was realising my fingers had been part of my life for five decades but I wasn’t dependent on them. They did not define me as a person.”. Cathrine, who lives in Christiana in the North West province of South Africa, has had more than a decade to adjust to her new life following the bite in December 2013.
