The exposed metal base of the padded post had sliced through Clunies-Ross's skin and two layers of muscle. A clip from the live broadcast shows the speedster look down and clutch his leg at the moment the flayed skin opens up.
I didn't realise how realistic a scenario an amputation was but [the medical staff] were all like 'wow, we saved it'"I woke up in the morning and was really, really crook. Sweating, shivering, started throwing up," he recalled. "I tried to get up and fell over. I couldn't stand up."Clunies-Ross, 24, is determined to return to the rugby pitch stronger than ever after his near catastrophic run-in with the deadly infection."It's pretty blurry from there.
"It's unusual to see what we did see in him," said Sean Nicklin, the Prince of Wales' head of plastic and reconstructive surgery. "It's a pretty significant infection from which, if there's a delay in the diagnosis, patients can quickly get very sick, become septic and go into shock. As fast as surgeons could clean out the dying tissue, the infection and its telltale redness kept spreading up the 24-year-old's leg. "Someone told me it spreads at four centimetres an hour," Clunies-Ross said. "I was pretty out of it but the look on my mum and dad's and my girlfiend's faces told me it was serious."
geerob Great story. Frightening. ‘... lying on the floor of the emergency department while my missus tried to explain I was unwell...’ He’s a good bloke and lucky. He might easily have waited many hours for attention.