‘At one point you could see straight through my arm,’ says Mark Brooks, 53. ‘It was grim to look at.’
Before we get into what he’s referring to, be warned that this story probably isn’t one to read at the dinner table – especially if you happen to have a weak stomach.
Mark, a dad of three from Grimsby, had always prided himself in being a bit of a fitness fanatic, regularly going to the gym and looking after his health.
But in December 2023, a horrifying incident would take place – one that would cost almost half a million pounds in medical bills and leave him with severe, lasting trauma.
It all started when Mark decided to do an ‘intense workout’, despite battling the ‘worst sore throat [he’d] ever had,’ and in the midst of a fast.
He says: ‘While I was working out, I tweaked my elbow which was no big deal. Then I developed a fever so I slept like a champion. When I woke up, it felt like I’d smashed my elbow really hard on the bedside table. It was killing and I couldn’t use it.’
Mark’s fever worsened and he began vomiting, but he put it down to ‘bad luck’ that he had an injured elbow, flu-like symptoms, and potentially food poisoning all at once.
What he didn’t know yet was that his flesh was being eaten alive by necrotising fasciitis, a rare and severe bacterial infection that has an alarmingly high mortality rate of between 20% and 40% — although it can vary depending on how early it’s picked up.
As his condition deteriorated, Mark started to realise something more serious was going on and that he needed to act fast,
‘I remember sitting on the carpet thinking that my decision making capacity was diminishing and that I only had one good decision left in me,’ he recalls.
Symptoms of necrotising fasciitis
Initial symptoms may include:
- Intense pain or loss of feeling near to a cut or wound – the pain may seem much worse than you would usually expect from a cut or wound
- Swelling of the skin around the affected area
- Flu-like symptoms, such as a high temperature, headache and tiredness
Later symptoms can include:
- Being sick (vomiting) and diarrhoea
- Confusion
- Black, purple or grey blotches and blisters on the skin (which may be less obvious on black or brown skin)
Mark managed to make it to hospital, where he was initially diagnosed with compartment syndrome, a painful condition from dangerous pressure buildup in a muscle compartment.
But when a large bruise appeared on his body out of nowhere, medics rushed him into surgery and they made the disturbing discovery of what was really going on.
Necrotising fasciitis was quickly eating away at Mark’s skin and muscle. Worse still, the bacteria had also entered his bloodstream, triggering his kidneys to shut down.
‘I was in the ICU for a week,’ he says. ‘They told me I had multi-organ failure. That sounded really bad.’
At this point, the bug had done so much damage his arm looked like ‘bone with nothing supporting it’.
But over the course of nine weeks in hospital, he underwent 25 operations to remove the dead skin, brachialis muscle, much of his tricep, a finger flexor and the connective tissue between Mark’s muscles.
Doctors used a vacuum pack to keep the limb viable while fighting the infection, harvesting skin from his leg and back in graft procedures that Mark has described as ‘the worst pain of [his] life’.
He says: ‘The donor sites were worse than the arm. I woke up crying uncontrollably.
‘They removed a muscle from my back and swung it around to rebuild my arm. Then they removed fat from my stomach and packed it into my arm to support the exposed bone.’
Although it was a gruelling process – with more procedures to come – it meant Mark at least kept his arm.
‘If I’d gone to an orthopaedic surgeon, they would have amputated,’ he explains. ‘One different decision, one different hospital, and my life would be totally different.’
The cost of reconstructive treatment has already reached around £450,000, covered by insurance, with tens of thousands more expected.
And it’s not just been a financial burden; Mark also developed PTSD following the ordeal.
To get through it, he tries to focus on the positives, saying: ‘The antidote was gratitude. Thinking about what I still had, not what I’d lost.
‘Necrotising fasciitis has a mortality rate of around 20% — but in my case it was closer to 50% so I’m just thankful to be alive and have all my limbs.’
By telling his story, Mark hopes to raise awareness of the symptoms of necrotising fasciitis, potentially saving someone else’s life.
‘I was fine and completely healthy, and it came completely out of the blue,” he adds. ‘And then all of a sudden, I’m fighting for my life. It was ridiculous.’
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