A super-fit man had to have his leg and lung amputated after his "minor cold" symptoms turned out to be a deadly infection.
Carter Parry, 24, didn't worry too much when he started to feel a little under the weather with a sore throat and a headache.
But within a few days, Carter, who is from Ohio, was unable to get out of bed and was rushed to hospital.
He awoke from a medically-induced coma two weeks later in January 2020 and was diagnosed with a life-threatening combination of influenza B and methicillin-susceptible staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) - leaving him with a one per cent chance of surviving.
After he woke up from his coma, Carter was told he would need his right leg and his right lung amputated.
He was also forced to have the toes on his left foot removed.
An IT analyst and an avid surfer who had been in the best shape of his life at the time, Carter says that his rare yet deadly infection could happen to anyone.
Carter - who is now defying the odds by learning to surf again - said: "I didn't think anything of it when I first got a sore throat and a headache. They just seemed like your usual minor cold symptoms.
"But in actual fact, there was a combination of Influenza B and MSSA in my blood that had created a super attack on my organs. I had a one per cent chance of surviving in the first place let alone surviving without any mental complications.
"A lot of my family and my friends were worried that when I came out of this I wouldn't be the same person. My brain could have been ruined by the lack of oxygen.
"The combination that happened to me is definitely incredibly rare - but anyone can get it so that's what is so scary about it. You could be the healthiest person in the world and have a bad stroke of luck and it just happens to you.
"I appreciate my life way more now that I've gone through such a crazy thing. Life is so fragile - it can end at any moment and the ball is in my court to make the most of it."
Back on December 31, 2019, Carter had just returned back to his adopted home of Kaneohoe, Hawaii after spending Christmas with his family in Ohio - when he started feeling minor cold-like symptoms such as a headache and a sore throat.
"I felt some minor cold symptoms after New Year's Eve. I had a headache and a sore throat which I attributed to the heavy smoke from the fireworks right outside my apartment but that was it," he added.
"At the time, I was in the best shape of my life and I had just spent two months on a surf trip in Bali. Although I was feeling a little more fatigued than usual, it was nothing abnormal to what I've experienced before in sickness. I just presumed I had the flu and got bed rest."
But in a matter of days his condition rapidly deteriorated and, two weeks later, Carter woke up from a medically induced coma in The Queen's Medical Center Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii with his family by his bedside.
He woke up to learn that a deadly infection in his blood - which resulted from the flu and pneumonia combined - had spread throughout his body. It left his body vulnerable to developing a life-threatening infection called methicillin-susceptible staphylococcus aureus (MSSA).
To keep him alive, Carter had to be put on vasopressors and then extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) - a temporary mechanical device that supports the heart and lungs.
Carter recalls: "By January 4, I had started feeling very weak, so we decided to go to the hospital first thing in the morning.
"The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital two weeks later with thousands of tubes in me and my sister from Ohio at my bedside.
"My heart rate function was at four per cent, my kidneys were failing and I had gone into acute respiratory distress syndrome so my lungs were shutting down."
Carter's infection had proceeded to completely destroy his right lung, spreading inside the right chest cavity.
Still on ECMO, Carter was rushed to Cleveland, Ohio, by air transport, and immediately admitted into Cleveland Clinic's cardiothoracic intensive care unit in mid-February.
To protect his left lung, Carter had to have his right lung surgically removed by pneumonectomy.
At the same time, to prevent the contaminated right chest space from becoming an abscess, surgeons also performed an open-window thoracostomy (also called a Clagett window), in which portions of Carter's ribs were removed and the hole around his chest skin was sewn to the inner lining of the chest wall.
Furthermore, because Carter had required ECMO and vasopressors for so long to keep him alive, side effects developed - including a decrease in blood flow to his extremities, causing dry gangrene in his feet and fingertips.
After turning to wet gangrene, Carter had to have an emergency amputation of his right foot.
While the dry gangrene in his fingers improved, Carter ultimately lost the toes on his left foot too. To prevent him from becoming a double amputee, doctors performed a transmetatarsal amputation on Carter's left foot - removing a stretch of skin from his right knee to his hip and transplanting that on his left foot.
After being in from intensive care for six months and rehab for three months, Carter was discharged in October 2020.
After living with his family, Carter moved back to Hawaii to live independently in March last year where he works as an IT contractor for the Marine Corps.
With training, he has been able to start living without supplemental oxygen. Astonishingly, he has also been been learning to surf again.
Carter - who has been documenting his return to surfing on YouTube and is setting his sights on a Paralympics stint in 2024 - said: "Life is definitely more challenging that it used to be for sure. But it's definitely more fulfilling now.
"Surfing is going well but slower than I would like perhaps! I can paddle for thirty seconds now and I actually stood up for the first time on a wave a few weeks ago. It was only for a millisecond but it was a huge breakthrough.
"My YouTube channel is chronicling my journey from returning back home to Hawaii in March last year, trying to live independently in Hawaii again and hopefully surfing competitively one day."
He added: "When I was in intensive care, I was desperately searching for a story of someone who was once athletic and active who not only lost their leg but also a lung and how they started playing competitive sports again.
"Usually stories of recovery are written after the fact. But I want to document my journey back to surfing in real time through my channel and show others how you find the energy and hope to pursue an athletic goal that might seem impossible.
"I think it's really important to help and inspire people - especially in the disabled community. I want to show that a small incremental progress every day can lead to a big goal.
"For me, that goal is standing on a big wave at a competitive level again."
