Teenager Has Legs and Fingers Amputated After Mistaking a Serious Illness for the Flu: ‘My Feet Were Green’

A college student had to have her legs and fingers amputated in life-saving surgeries after mistaking a serious illness for freshers’ flu.

Eight days after Ketia Moponda arrived at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, in September 2024, she began feeling sick, according to SWNS.

The 19-year-old didn’t act right away because she thought her symptoms—starting with a cough—were just freshers’ flu, a common illness for students at the start of the school year.

She remembered feeling drowsy one evening at dinner, so she took some medicine and went to bed. The next day, she felt worse.

Moponda called her cousin and her best friend, telling the latter that she felt like she was “going to die.” When she didn’t check in the next day, her friend contacted the university.

The marketing and advertising student was found unconscious in her dorm room and taken to the ICU at Leicester Royal Infirmary hospital.

Moponda was diagnosed with meningococcal septicaemia. This serious bacterial infection caused meningitis, which led to sepsis. In January, she had amputations on her fingers and both legs.

Meningococcal disease, according to Cleveland Clinic, is a bacterial infection that spreads through saliva or mucus. It can infect the meninges, the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, and the blood. Survivors may face long-term complications, including brain or kidney damage, nerve injury, or loss of limbs.

Moponda wants to share her story to warn other students. “I have no memory of any of this, but I’m lucky to be alive,” she said.

She explained that when she arrived at the hospital, her blood oxygen level was only 1%, and her blood wasn’t circulating properly.

“My feet were green and swollen,” she said. “My organs were failing, and doctors told my family that if I woke at all, I’d likely be brain dead.”

At the hospital, Moponda was put into a coma and woke up two days later. She said she “couldn’t see or speak, and it was a whole week before I started speaking.”

During her treatment, the skin on her fingers and feet became swollen and painful because of poor blood flow. She also caught a flesh-eating infection on her buttocks, which was treated with a skin graft from her thighs.

Her fingers were amputated at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham in December. Both legs were amputated just below the knee the following month. “Basically my legs had died because of a lack of blood going to them,” she said. “It was terrible.”

“I just kept crying all the time. I felt so hurt, it was killing my spirit,” she added.

Moponda, who had lived an active lifestyle and wanted to be a model, said she “just cried” when she woke up from the operation. “I felt like my whole life had just begun, and now I had to start all over again differently.”

The student was discharged from the hospital in February and received prosthetic lower legs a few months later in May.

Now, she is learning how to walk again and is determined to break “all the barriers of disability.”

“This doesn’t make me less of a person,” Moponda said. “I am unapologetically me, and I want to help others feel confident about who they are and how they look.”