NHS: Woman diagnosed with sepsis ends up in hospital for seven months - symptoms and how it's treated

Warning: Graphic images below

Beth Budgen was taken to hospital in the early hours of 25 December last year, after suffering pain in her left side and vomiting. The Hampshire woman first went to Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, before being placed in an induced coma.

Doctors then told her family that Beth was going into complete organ failure, and had to be transferred to St Thomas Hospital in London to be put on a life-saving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine.

Beth, 46, ended up with flu, pneumonia and strep A - and subsequently sepsis. She was in London until the end of January, before moving to Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester.

It was there that Beth came to with blackened feet - and doctors told her that they would both be amputated.

Beth, 46, said: "I don't remember much from Christmas Day or my initial time in hospital. The first thing I properly remember was the doctors telling me that my feet were black and had to be amputated. I was stunned because the last thing I really remember was feeling a bit off on Christmas Day.

"It was definitely shocking to be told that - my hands were black as well so I though I might lose my arms as well.

"Once my legs were taken off I spent two months in a surgical ward, feeling well to all intents and purposes but waiting for treatment. That is when I started having flashbacks and hallucinations of everything that happened while I was in a coma."

Following the amputation, Beth had an operation on her right lung to remove sepsis scarring. Since then, she has been to hospitals in Portsmouth, Andover and Salisbury, where she had plastic surgery on her hand, before ending up in Roehampton - where she has begun the road to recovery.

From working out in the gym to learning to walk on her new prosthetic legs, Beth has come a long way in a short space of time, but has now been in hospital for just shy of seven months. Thankfully, she had the news this week that she is likely to be heading home on Friday.

Beth describes learning to walk with prosthetic legs as "comfortable, but not painless" but is delighted with her progress.

"For so long now I have been focusing everything on getting to this point," she said.

"On day five I was able to start walking outside the bars, and have started walking aroung the gym without my sticks, which is fab. The thing now is building it up each day.

"The NHS has been amazing, as have my family and friends who have visited me almost every single day I've been in hospital - I'm so grateful to all of them.

"I'm detemined to be on my legs as much as possible; I'm certainly one of those people who likes to be here, there and everywhere. Sepsis has given me a change of outlook, but I believe everything happens for a reason."

While she was in her coma, the company Beth worked for went into liquidation, and so while looking for another job, she currently has no source of income.

A GoFundMe has been started by her sister Andrea to raise money for things such as maintenance of wheelchairs, adaptions to her home and a bespoke pairs of prosthetic legs, and has already raised more than £18,000.

Click this link to find out more and donate.