A man who had noticed a spot on his leg died of sepsis soon afterwards when it was discovered he had been infected by a flesh-eating bug.
Brett Dymond, 38, started to feel unwell just days before he died on Mother’s Day after experiencing hallucinations and noticing a spot on his leg that began to swell.
His wife Charlene called 111 and he was told to go to the hospital where doctors discovered he had contracted sepsis from Necrotising Fasciitis – a rare flesh-eating infection that can occur if a wound gets infected.
The family is uncertain how Dymond caught the infection but medical staff said the bug can be found in soil. Relatives believe that he may have caught it through the spot on his leg while doing gardening or garage work.
Dymond’s family said the father of two, Reiss, 16, and Tommy, 2, went to work the day he started feeling unwell but his condition deteriorated on 16 March.
When he went to the hospital, Dymond was said to be initially laughing and joking with medical staff.
“As the evening went on it got really bad,” Dymond’s cousin Kelly Sims told The Independent. “His major organs started to fail so they put him in an induced coma just to give him some kind of hope.
“Following from that he ended up having two cardiac arrests because he went downhill so quickly – that was on the Friday.”
Dymond, who owned a plumbing business, was monitored closely and was said to be one of the worst cases of sepsis the intensive care unit had seen in five years.
He started to show signs of recovery on the Saturday, but another major cardiac arrest caused significant brain damage leaving the family to have to make a heartbreaking decision.
“They had two options,” Ms Sims said. “They could amputate all his fingers and legs that had gone black [from sepsis] and he’d be brain dead or they could turn off the machine.
“So they turned the machine off.”
She added: “It went so quick, it was so sudden and unexpected. None of us expected that, it’s awful. “Brett was 38, he has a small child. I was shocked. I thought initially he was going to be okay, he’s going to pull through.”
Ms Sims said she had just started getting close to her cousin after the pair reconnected at his wedding just before the pandemic. She said his wife Charlene has been struggling to cope with his death.
“She’s absolutely devastated, she can’t function as normal at the moment,” Ms Sims said.
The family has launched a GoFund Me campaign to help his young family with funeral expenses.
“He was just a hard working, loving husband. He was a great cousin, really funny, really kind thoughtful man. He was really kind and he’d do anything for everybody. He was one of a kind,” Ms Sims said.
