Teen Has Limbs Amputated After Mistaking Serious Infection for Flu in England

A college student had to get her legs and fingers amputated in life-saving operations after mistaking a serious illness for freshers’ flu.

Eight days after Ketia Moponda arrived at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, in September 2024, she started feeling sick, per SWNS. 

The 19-year-old didn’t take immediate action because she believed her symptoms – which started with just a cough – were caused by the freshers’ flu, which often affects students at the beginning of a school year.

She recalled feeling drowsy one evening at dinner, so she took medicine and went to bed. When she woke up the next day, she felt worse. 

Moponda called her cousin and best friend throughout the day, telling the latter that she felt like she was “going to die.” When she didn’t check in the next day, her friend contacted the university. 

The marketing and advertising student was found unconscious in her dorm room and transported to the ICU at Leicester Royal Infirmary hospital.

Moponda was diagnosed with meningococcal septicaemia. The serious bacterial infection caused bacterial meningitis, which led to sepsis. The college freshman underwent amputations to her fingers and both legs in January.

Meningococcal disease, per Cleveland Clinic, is a bacterial infection that can be spread through spit or mucus. The illness can infect your meninges, which are the membranes that cover one’s brain and spinal cord, and blood. Some survivors have long-term complications, including brain damage, kidney damage, loss of limbs and nerve damage. 

Moponda, who wants to share her story to caution other students, said, “I have no memory of any of this, but I’m lucky to be alive.”

The student explained that when she arrived at the hospital, her blood oxygen level was at 1% and her blood wasn’t properly circulating through her body. 

“My feet were green and swollen,” she said. “My organs were failing, and doctors told my family that if I woke at all I’d likely be brain dead.”

At the hospital, Moponda was put into a coma and woke up two days later. She recalled that she “couldn’t see or speak and it was a whole week before I started speaking.”

During her treatment, the skin on her fingers and feet became swollen and painful because of the lack of blood flow. She also caught a flesh-eating infection on her buttocks, which was addressed with a skin graft from her thighs. 

Her fingers were amputated at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham in December. Both of her legs were amputated right below the knee the following month.  “Basically my legs had died because of a lack of blood going to them,” she said. “It was terrible.”

“I just kept crying all the time. I felt so hurt, it was killing my spirit,” she added.

Moponda, who lived an active lifestyle and had aspirations to be a model, said she “just cried” when she woke up from the operation. “I felt like my whole life had just begun and now I had to start all over again differently.”

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The student was discharged from the hospital in February and got prosthetic lower legs a few months later in May. 

Now, she is learning how to walk again and is dedicated to breaking “all the barriers of disability.”

“This doesn’t make me less of a person,” Moponda said.  “I am unapologetically me and I want to help others to feel confident about who they are and how they look.”