Model of Diversity - A woman empowering other with her story

Jue Snell developed sepsis after being electrocuted by her laptop. After taking the brave decision for her arm to be amputated, she is now using her experience to empower and embolden and is walking the catwalk at London Fashion Week

- Angela Walton

“I know now this was the best thing that could have happened to me. I’m showing people, women - anyone they do not need to fit into a perfect box.“

Jue Snell knows all about adversity. She knows what it’s like to feel stripped bare and tested to the very core. She can also testify, from harrowing personal experience, how it feels to be completely transformed by the very situation that threatened to break her.

The married mother-of-two from Lach Dennis had life-saving surgery to amputate half of her arm after she was electrocuted whilst plugging in her laptop.

She had a successful career in business transformation and performance management, but everything changed when her hand became stuck to a faulty plug socket giving her a sustained, severe electric shock through her body.

‘It’s actually not what you’d expect – it’s not like you see on TV where their hair stands on end,’ she lightheartedly points out, despite the obvious horror. ‘I was conscious the whole time and the current felt like pins and needles – it travelled all the way up my arm, into my face and across my chest. I vividly remember trying to pull my hand away, but I couldn’t get it off the socket.’

Uncontrollable sickness followed as her body’s fight or flight response kicked in: ‘I had really bad chest pains and paramedics thought I was going to have a heart attack,’ she explains. ‘Apparently when you get an electric shock it can either affect your nervous system or your heart – after many tests doctors at the hospital said I had no damage to my heart and I was extremely lucky to be alive.

‘I’ve survived, I’ve got a chance, I needed to sort myself out and make this a positive thing.’