(From You Tube Video description)
A mother-of-three had half of her face sliced off after developing a potentially deadly infection after whacking her head on her oven.Donna Corden, 46, of Leeds, knocked herself out during the incident earlier this year and sustained a small cut above her left eyebrow.Within just 24 hours, her face turned a frightening shade of black and she became delirious and dizzy. She was rushed to hospital.Doctors diagnosed her with necrotising fasciitis – a flesh-eating bug that often kills. Her children were told to ‘prepare for the worst’.Surgeons were able to cut away the rotten flesh to keep her alive, but days later she went onto develop sepsis and her life hung in the balance.Her body went into organ failure and she was placed in an induced coma so she could recover, she was pumped full of antibiotics.Speaking for the first time since recovering, Ms Corden, who has had skin grafted from her lower limbs onto her face, said: ‘I’m alive. It could be worse.”Yes, it is difficult. I could wonder why it happened to me, but there would be no point. It was amazing. I couldn’t believe I was alive.’When did the incident happen?Ms Corden, who is currently on sick leave, said that her legs gave way, because of her arthritis, as she stood in the kitchen in January this year.Knocking herself out on the oven, her son David Lawton, 24, discovered that she was unconscious sometime later.Ms Corden added: ‘I had a nasty cut and there was blood everywhere. I didn’t want to go to hospital, so David called a doctor and butterfly strips were put across the cut.’The next day, her cut began turning a frightening shade of black.Then, when her head swelled and she became delirious and dizzy, daughter Jayde Stammers, 26, phoned an ambulance.When was she diagnosed?Blue-lighted to St James Hospital in Leeds, it was by chance that Ms Corden was diagnosed with NF.Though it’s incredible rare, one of her doctors had studied it during medical training, and immediately flagged it up as a possibility.Once the formal NF diagnosis was made by the hospital’s eye specialist, she was whisked to Leeds General Infirmary for an emergency operation.Her children were told that it was unlikely she would survive.Ms Corden said: ‘Jayde apparently told doctors, “Please save my mum’s eye”. But they said, “It’s not a case of saving her eye, it’s a case of saving her life”.’After three hours in theatre, surgeons successfully managed to cut away the rotten flesh.But, days later, she also developed sepsis, which occurs when the body attacks its own organs and tissues in response to an infection.Her body went into organ failure. Put in an induced coma so she could recover, she was pumped full of antibiotics.Then, after being brought round, she was discharged as an out-patient on February 10.Miss Stammers kept a personal diary of her mother’s time in intensive care, which she said made for emotional reading.Her Facebook statuses, written as she recovered, are equally heart-wrenching.In
