A father-of-three has had his arms and legs amputated and part of his nose has been eaten away after he developed sepsis.

When John Snow felt a bit under the weather and took a few days off work, he never could have imagined that four months later he would have lost all his limbs and be waiting for surgery to rebuild his face.

The 48-year-old warehouse worker, of Priory Road North in Dartford, thought he had pulled a muscle in his side when he decided to take a few days off work in May.

John’s wife Karen said: “He said he just felt like his body needed to relax.”

Two days later, John started to feel worse. He woke Karen at 5am and asked her to call him an ambulance.

She said: “He said he felt like he was having a heart attack. His lips and under his fingernails were blue.”

Little did the couple know, these were the tell-tale signs of the life-threatening condition caused by an infection and the body's immune system's response to it.

The infection is usually bacterial but can also be caused by viral, fungal, or parasitic infections. In John’s case it was invasive Strep A.

Karen, 52, drove her husband to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with sepsis.

By the following morning his kidneys had failed and he was on dialysis.

His body was going into septic shock and he was placed in an induced coma.

Karen, who has been with John for 35 years, said: “They took me into a room and told me to prepare myself because putting him into this sleep was quite dangerous and his heart might just stop, but they needed to do it because his body would not keep still for them to treat him.”

The next day brought more bad news as the father-of-three developed pneumonia and underwent a blood transfusion.

Four days after entering Dartford’s Darent Valley Hospital, the family were told there was nothing more the doctors could do and specialists from London’s St Thomas’s Hospital were called in.

After a risky transfer in which Karen was again told there was a chance John could die or suffer a bleed on his brain, Karen was given the devastating news John’s body had gone into septic shock, a potentially fatal complication of sepsis that occurs when dangerously low blood pressure and abnormalities develop in the body’s cells.

Karen, 52, explained: “Sepsis and Strep A take hold of your body very quickly. They strip you of any energy and eat away at your muscles and attack your vital organs.”

John was placed in a coma for two weeks with “tubes coming out of everywhere”.

However, after slowly being brought out of the coma, John gradually started to improve and the couple began to see “a light at the end of the tunnel.”

“He couldn’t talk or even lift his head off the pillow at first,” Karen said.

‘You don’t realise just how much you use your fingers’

After a month in intensive care, he was moved to a high-dependency ward where he started to walk and work on his upper body strength with physio.

But, just a week after being moved to a regular ward, the couple faced yet more devastating news as doctors revealed John’s feet and hands would have to be amputated as they had gangrene.

Karen said: “They were mummified. They were rock hard and clenched. The doctors left it as long as possible but in the end they had no choice.”

John lost his arms from below the elbow and his legs from below the knee.

Karen said: “I’ve tried to be there for him all the time. You go through depression, anxiety and you grieve the loss of the limbs.”

John is now at a rehab centre in London, getting used to his prosthetic legs, but Karen said he just wants to get home.

She said: “I tell him how amazing he is, but he doesn’t realise how ill he was. He is already kicking a ball and he’s only had them two and a half weeks.”

Karen said the hardest thing he has found is having no fingers.

“He really misses his hands,” she said. “He said you don’t realise just how much you use your fingers. They are your tools.”

He has a wheelchair which he controls with his elbows, but Karen says leaning over will eventually lead to neck and back issues.

John is on a waiting list for hands from the NHS but they will not be available for two years and Karen says the prosthetics only have three fingers.

Nick Byram, who is a friend of the couple, runs the Growler Stop tap room and off licence in Spital Street, Dartford, and has set up a GoFundMe to help raise money to buy mechanical hands privately, which cost up to £100,000, and to make adaptions to their home when he moves back.

Nick said: “We are trying to raise funds for our long-standing friend after he went into septic shock only two days after beginning to feel unwell, as a result of an invasive Strep A infection.

“The aim of our effort is to help meet John's initial expenses, and those of his wife and three children, as they try to get back on an even keel, whilst he begins a long road to recovery and rehabilitation.”

To donate click the link here.

Back in August, former Kent MP and newly-appointed peer Craig Mackinlay spoke of his near-death experience and hopes for the future after he lost his hands and feet to sepsis.

As Mental Health Awareness Day approaches on October 10, Mr Mackinlay is using his platform to call for urgent improvements in sepsis aftercare and mental health support for survivors.

In a new podcast - Sepsis Voices with Dr Ron, released in September for Sepsis Awareness Month - Mr Mackinlay, who received prosthetics after his sepsis ordeal, criticises the NHS for its inadequate provision of prosthetic limbs, saying, “What the NHS is currently giving out in terms of prosthetics does not do mental health any good”.

The charity UK Sepsis Trust has launched a Change.org petition calling for public support to make sepsis as much of a priority as heart attacks and strokes within the NHS. You can sign it here

Meanwhile, John also needs reconstructive surgery on his face after the sepsis ate away a part of his nose, so Karen makes sure John does not catch himself in a mirror.

“I know what he is like,” she said. “I take him for outings away from the rehab centre but I make sure we don’t go past any mirrors.”