A Canadian woman, Julia Anderson, nearly lost her legs due to cut-off circulation after passing out at home following a boozy girls’ night out.
The 36-year-old woman collapsed on her bed – kneeling on all fours – after sinking 20 drinks with friends at a bar in Ontario in 2020.
When she woke up her legs had ballooned to double their size and she could not move on her own, needing assistance from her 70-year-old mother Sandra.
Ms Anderson, who is a mother herself said she feared she had broken them on the night out. DailyMail reports.
She was diagnosed with compartment syndrome, a rare but deadly condition that occurs when blood does not reach some of the body’s muscles and nerves.
The lack of blood circulation to her legs deprived the limbs of oxygen and other nourishment. Doctors said if they had not acted faster, she may have lost her limbs.
‘They weren’t sore, but they were double their usual size so I called out to my mom, who called an ambulance,’ Ms Anderson said.
‘When I got to the hospital my whole body was very swollen. I’m tiny, I’m only 100lbs, to them I just looked like a 140lb girl. I told them “guys I don’t look like this, something is wrong”.’
Ms Anderson’s case erupted in an early morning in 2020 after she went to bed in the prostrate position after a night out.
The woman had gone out with friends with whom she had been ‘drinking vodka all night’ as well as ‘a lot of straight liquor.’
She said: ‘We didn’t eat. Pre-drinks and bar drinks combined, it was the equivalent of 20 drinks, so quite a bit.
‘I was drunker than normal. When I got home I just thought, “go to bed Julia” and I passed out curled up on top of my legs face down.’
The pressure on her legs while sleeping halted circulation, and it took only hours for her body to develop compartment syndrome.
An ambulance rushed Ms Anderson to Toronto’s Michael Garron Hospital, where doctors performed a barrage of tests and diagnosed her.
Ms Anderson said: ‘I was immediately rushed into surgery because my muscle was deteriorating and releasing toxins into my bloodstream causing my body to swell up and my kidneys to shut down.’
Surgeons performed a grueling procedure where Julia’s left leg was sliced open and muscle was cut off to relieve the swelling and reduce the toxins being released into her bloodstream.
