Off The RecordA Man Who Burned His Thumb While Cooking Was Shocked To Wake Up And Find Out That Both His Legs Had To Be Amputated

A guy has described his despair at losing both of his legs due to what he believed to be a “minor” burn on his thumb.

After the near-fatal incident that occurred in December while Max Armstrong was camping with his friends in Kiowa, Colorado, he spent six days in a coma.

The 40-year-old injured his thumb while preparing pasta for supper after spending a week in the woods with his pals for an enjoyable outdoor retreat.

“I grabbed a skillet wrong and my thumb touched the hot part,” Armstrong explained. “I could feel it burning as I moved it to the table, but I didn’t want to drop it.

“I didn’t think much of it as I have gotten burns, scrapes and cuts from living in the outdoors and being outdoors my whole life.”

He cleansed and bandaged his wound after completing his cooking, but a few days later, Armstrong noticed that one of his legs “started to swell up.

At first, he dismissed it since he thought he might have unintentionally “hurt his ankle at some point” and didn’t consider the pain to be that “significant.”

But on December 7th, he was prepared to pack up his tent and go to bed.

Outdoor enthusiast “I decided to head home and my buddy suggested we go to the hospital,” the person stated. “At that point, my toenails started turning purple and the swelling had increased.”

Armstrong went to the AdventHealth Parker hospital, perplexed as to why his lower limbs were swollen.

“At this point, the burn on my thumb had become pretty ugly, it had turned black and looked like it was eating away at my thumb,” said the explorer.

The business owner stated that his eyes started ‘rolling back in his head,’ and he started ‘talking nonsense’ as he sat down to talk to doctors about his strange

Then, doctors discovered that strep sepsis, which may be fatal if left untreated, swiftly developed from a bacteria that had infected the burn on his thumb.

After being taken to AdventHealth Porter, which had facilities better suited to his needs, Armstrong was put into a six-day induced coma by medical professionals.

On December 13, Armstrong suddenly recovered consciousness, although his loved ones were advised to brace themselves for the worst.

“Everyone was very happy to see me,” he said. “The doctors told them that I might not make it, there was a lot of concern that I would never wake up.”

“My family was extremely happy, I could hear them cheering and then the nurses came in and started cleaning me up.”

When Armstrong discovered that both of his feet were “completely black,” however, and the doctors told him that they would have to amputate his limbs, the euphoria swiftly faded.

He clarified that the infection had wiped out his feet while he was in the coma and had begun to spread to his legs, making it impossible to save them.

Armstrong therefore spent a month recuperating in the hospital after undergoing a three-hour treatment on December 23 to amputate both of his legs.

“When I woke up, I thought my legs were still there and then I came to realize that they weren’t,” he stated, referring to the moment he woke up following the surgery.

“I felt down my leg and realised that my legs weren’t there, I asked the nurse and she confirmed that I had my legs amputated.”

“She told me that my family was waiting for me and kept on reminding me of them which anchored me.”

With this drive, Armstrong then spent an additional 16 days at the Sky Ridge Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation clinic in Colorado after leaving the hospital on January 14.

He will now need to use a wheelchair for the remainder of his life, but he is eager to master shoulder and triceps workouts that will improve his mobility, calling them his “lifeline.”

“It was a hunting trip with friends that turned into a bit of a nightmare,” Armstrong remarked in reference to his experience. “Sadly, dinner was enough for the burn to get strep A.”

Armstrong’s road to recovery is being funded in part by a GoFundMe, which you can view here.