It all started with a sore throat, the kind that feels like you have swallowed razor blades. At first I assumed it was tonsillitis, but by day three I wondered if it was swine flu, which was then doing the rounds. It was February 2010, and I was due to go to a family party that morning, but I dropped my daughter and granddaughter off there and came straight home, stopping off to get some soup on the way. That’s the last time I walked using my own feet.

As I stood at the stove, my legs gave way. Frightened, I called my sister, a retired nurse, and her son, a paramedic, and they got me in bed, agreeing it was probably flu. I don’t remember anything after that, although my daughter says that by lunchtime, I’d been sick and was complaining of excruciating back pain, so she called an ambulance.

The paramedics also suspected swine flu and told my daughter to keep me rested, although when my breathing became erratic and I failed to recognise her, she called for another ambulance and this time, the paramedics noticed a rash on my tummy and rushed me to A&E. My feet started going grey and the rash was spreading up my body.

I was eventually diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. The medication I was given often gives people terrifying nightmares when combined with morphine. My only moment of lucidity was when a succession of doctors came in to look at the rash. “Who’s coming in to see it next, the dustbin man?” I remember laughing. Shortly after, my heart stopped three times in a row, after which I fell into a coma.

Doctors didn’t think I’d make it through the night, but three and a half weeks later, I opened my eyes and started crying – a positive sign, the nurses told my family, as it’s such a normal reaction. For years, triggers took me straight back to those weeks – the strongest of which was a double bleep on the BBC that sounded like the machine that kept me alive.

The first thing I remember after coming round is the feeling that the medics were trying to kill me. I bit down hard on the tubes they put in my mouth. As for my feet and hands, which were by now covered in black flesh, I assumed my real ones must be underneath.

A few weeks after coming out of the coma, I was told that all four limbs had to be amputated, starting with my legs. When I looked down after the first operation, I thought that I looked like a drawing of a body with the feet and half the calves rubbed out. I was terrified. The pain was the worst I’ve ever experienced.

Two weeks later, the same surgeon amputated my right hand and half my forearm. Amazingly he managed to save three-quarters of my thumb and about a centimetre of my forefinger on my left hand. Without the pinching mechanism that gave me, I would have nothing like the independence I do now, although it took me some time to see the positives. When I was moved into a rehabilitation ward, I felt suicidal. A surprising inner strength, counselling, some magical hospital staff and good friends and family, got me through.

Feeding myself toast for the first time was a mammoth moment. And although it took me 45 minutes of writhing about on the bed, I taught myself how to get my bra off, then I learned how to undress and dress completely. The day I had a shower on my own, with my legs and hands in plastic bags, was a particular milestone. Every single aspect of my life had to be relearned, aged 54. But I came to see my physiotherapy as my ticket back to independence, and worked like mad at it. The first time I tried on my prosthetic legs, it was agony. But now, I only use my wheelchair to get to the loo at night.

After a stint in depressing sheltered accommodation for the elderly – an awful place for a 55-year-old, but the only place they had room for me after 13 months in hospital – I moved into a new apartment where I live alone.

I still have emotional wobbles and can’t walk far, but I returned to my job in social work and I drive, cook, swim and paint – the latter two of which I didn’t even do before losing my limbs. It’s an ordinary life, but given what happened to me, that alone feels extraordinary.

• As told to Kate Hilpern

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