Jo Gilchrist, from Warwick, Queensland, is left wheel chair bound after contracting an infection whilst using a friends make up brush.
The 27 year old is likely to spend the rest of her life in a wheel chair since being admitted to a hospital on Valentines Day.
It started when Ms.Gilchrist developed a niggling ache in her back, which she put down to bad posture, but the pain grew worse. She had a staph infection which invaded her body and attacked her spine.
The infection was contracted when Gilchrist borrowed her friend’s makeup brush to cover a pimple.
Speaking to a news reporter Gilchrist said:
“It got to the point I had to call one of those doctors who come to you because I couldn’t get out of bed,”
“I rate the pain worse than childbirth. I literally thought I was going to die.”
At first doctors were unable to diagnose Gilchrist but when she started to loose feeling in her body medical staff knew they had to act swiftly.
“They told me if it went up my arms and chest I would have to learn to breathe again and it would be my parents’ decision to turn the machines off,” she said.
She was airlifted from her hometown of Warwick to Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital for emergency surgery.
When she eventually woke, she learned she had contracted community-associated MRSA – an antibiotic-resistant form of staph.
Doctors said the infection had attacked and damaged her spine so severely that she would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
However despite this awful news Ms Gilchrist is determined to prove doctors wrong.
“They first said I would never walk again but I got a wiggle out of my toes and I just kept fighting,”
“This has been a real wake-up call. Before this I was just going through the motions and existing but now I have a huge fight for life. If someone tells me I can’t do something, I keep going because just the look on their faces when I do it is worth it.”
She will have to spend another three months in the hospital before being allowed home to her two year old son Timmy.
Somewhere in the region of one-third of healthy people carry staph bacteria on their skin or in their nose, while drug-resistant strains are known as MRSA.