A medical student who lost all four limbs due to sepsis has called on people to get the meningitis vaccine to help prevent them going through a similar ordeal.
Lily McGarry was rushed to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff with flu-like symptoms in January before her condition rapidly worsened and she went into septic shock.
The 23-year-old was diagnosed with meningococcal septicaemia, a type of blood poisoning caused by the same kind of bacteria that causes the most common form of bacterial meningitis.
Ms McGarry, who is originally from Jersey but was studying in Cardiff, survived two cardiac arrests before spending a fortnight in a coma and more than 100 days in intensive care.
The infection caused severe blood flow issues in her body and, as a result, she had to undergo surgery to amputate all four of her limbs at the Morriston Hospital in Swansea.
As the Cardiff University student begins her rehabilitation, her father Stuart McGarry told The UK Tonight with Sarah-Jane Mee his daughter now wants people to have the meningitis vaccine to help prevent protect them against meningococcal septicaemia.
Mr McGarry said: “(Lily) wants to get the message out to everyone. The (meningitis) vaccination rate post-COVID for children has dropped off significantly. She just wanted to get the message over to get vaccinated.
“I mean, obviously, Lily proves that it doesn’t work for 100% of the people 100% of the time.
“But the meningitis vaccination programme in the UK has been phenomenally successful… some of the staff at Cardiff hospital hadn’t seen a case like Lily for 10 years. So it’s proven it’s effective. It works. Get it.”
‘Difficult conversations’
Mr McGarry was in Jersey when he received the call from the hospital to say his daughter was unwell.
“It’s the call that no father wants really,” he said.
“They said that I should come over to Cardiff, that Lily was really unwell, and I said, ‘I’ll pack a bag and get a flight tomorrow’ and the nurse said ‘no, you should be here now’.
“Her mum was in Australia when she received the call – so she would have had the flight from hell to come back all the way from Australia to Cardiff.”
Mr McGarry said he later had to have a lot of “very difficult conversations” with NHS staff about what would happen to his daughter’s limbs – with doctors telling him that both of her arms and legs would have to be amputated.
“She’s out of intensive care now after 113 days, she is in the rehabilitation section,” Mr McGarry said.
“The narrative has changed to the body that she has got and what she can do with that.
“I had a wobble for a couple of weeks when I was in front of her and was tearful… she looked me in the eye and she said, ‘Dad, I will make the best of my stumps’.
“And she owned the word ‘stumps’… from that I got a lot of strength because I thought, ‘my God, I think she’s got this’.”
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A GoFundMe account set up to help raise money for prosthetic limbs for Ms McGarry had raised more than £370,000 as of Tuesday night.
Mr McGarry said: “People have been very generous. So there’s that. And that will give Lily that choice down the road.
“At the moment, though, we’re focused more on the present – the small steps… getting her wounds to heal.
“The prosthetics – she’s trying now, with just little ones on her arms, just to give her a little bit more independence, which is something she craves.”
Mr McGarry described his daughter as “a delight”, saying: “We went on a walking holiday in the Swiss Alps last year. She was very happy to go walking around, looking at the wonder and the majesty of the Alps, having a nice gooey Swiss fondue and a couple of pints with her dad – it just doesn’t get better.
“She’s the best person I know. She’s my daughter.”
