CARER Elizabeth Hatt thought she would die when her body was racked by a flesh-eating bug which devoured part of her calf muscle.

Mum-of-four Mrs Hatt, from Queensway, Didcot, had a lymph node removed from the top of her right leg when she suffered Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2007.

Although she recovered from the cancer, she almost lost her life when the flesh-eating disease necrotising fasciitis struck three years later.

Mrs Hatt, 66, who lives with partner Brian Simmonds, 67, said she feared for her life when surgeons were forced to operate on her leg at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in November.

She said: “I think I was more susceptible to infection after having my lymph node removed.

“I was referred to the Churchill Hospital for an MRI scan after the pain in my leg became absolutely unbearable.

“Staff there discovered the infection and I was sent to the JR where I was placed on a life-support machine.

“Then staff operated to remove a 15-inch section of calf muscle between my knee and the middle of my foot and afterwards I need a skin graft.

“This disease can have quite a high mortality rate so I thought I was going to die – it is only recently that I have started to feel better again, although I now walk with a slight limp.

“I was more frightened by the flesh-eating bug than cancer because when I got cancer I always thought I would be cured, but with this I didn’t know what to expect.”

Mrs Hatt, who has a part-time job caring for adults with learning difficulties, said necrotising fasciitis could be difficult to diagnose and she wanted people to be aware of its existence.

She still needs to wear bandages on a part of the wound that has not completely healed.

Mrs Hatt added: “I have been through an absolute nightmare and want to thank medical staff who were fantastic, and members of my family, including my 12 grandchildren, who have been very supportive.”

About 500 people in the UK each year contract necrotising fasciitis, a bacteria that eats away the skin.

Necrotising fasciitis usually develops at the spot of a recent injury, such as a cut in the skin, an ulcer or a sore and symptoms include severe pain at the site of the injury. During the infection, the skin around the injury turns red and swells.

It will then turn purple before blisters form, then burst.