A BUG ATE HALF MY FACE

A deadly infection left Donna Corden, 52, too terrified to look in the mirror

-  CANDICE FERNANDEZ

Studying my reflection, I frowned at the 2cm-long cut on my forehead. It was 16 January 2017 and earlier that day I’d tripped in my kitchen, hitting my head hard on the oven door. The pain was excruciating and my son David, then 24, had called out an emergency doctor who’d cleaned and patched the wound with butterfly stitches. 

As a hairdresser, I took pride in my appearance but, while I wasn’t looking my best right now, I figured that I’d soon heal and tried not to worry about it. However, with my head still pounding the following day, I headed to hospital, where I had scans and tests to check for concussion, which came back clear.

DAZED AND DISFIGURED

Back home, though, I kept being sick 5 and by lunchtime the next day, I was in a terrible state.

'Mum, your face is swollen under your left eye, like you've been beaten up,' my daughter Jayde, then 26, told me, worried.

Feeling woozy as I looked in the bathroom mirror, I saw that black blisters had erupted on my cheek, painful and oozing blood. Everything that happened next just felt like a blur. Jayde dialled 999 while I lay on the sofa, feeling dizzier by the second and, as I was helped into an ambulance, I told her to look after my youngest child, Summer, then 10, as I faded into unconsciousness.

It was several days before I came round. When I opened my eyes, I saw Jayde at my bedside, in the intensive care unit at Leeds General Infirmary, along with a surgeon.

'We thought you weren't going to make it,' Jayde wept, as she and the surgeon explained all I'd been through while unconscious.

By the time you arrived at hospital, the wound on your forehead and the skin around  your eye socket was turning black,' the surgeon said.