I Woke Up And They Were Rotting

Cathrine lost seven fingers and nine toes after developing tick bite fever – and her prosthetics don’t make life any easier. 

- Almari Wessels

IT STARTED with a mysterious mark on her arm. Initially she thought it was a mosquito bite but she was wrong – after collapsing she was rushed to hospital where she lay semiconscious for weeks. When she eventually woke up she discovered to her horror that most of her fingers and toes were black and rotting. “They looked like an Egyptian mummy’s fingers,” she says.

Cathrine Coetzee (52) is still struggling to come to terms with the fact that she’ll never be able to go for pedicures and will probably never be able to paint again.

She used to spend many happy hours painting but not any more. After losing seven fingers and nine toes she had prosthetic fingers made at great expense but sadly she just couldn’t get used to wearing them so now her paintbrushes lie forgotten, gathering dust.

Once she delighted in French manicures but now she has only two thumbs and an index finger. She has just one toe left so her dainty sandals have had to make way for the takkies she lives in these days.

“I can’t describe what it’s like to wake up in hospital with your fingers and toes pitch black and dried out. But I can’t wish it away . . . Believe me, I would if I could,” says the homemaker and mother of three.

She’s chatting to us at the home of her parents, Annatjie (76) and Elroy Abbott (77), in Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape because there are fewer “distractions” here. For three years she’s been haunted by what happened and this is the first time she’s speaking about it in an interview.

“I hadn’t come to terms with it completely, perhaps because I wanted to sue the doctors who treated me, but the claim failed and I realised I had to take control of my life again,” she says through her tears.