A medical student who lost limbs to meningitis has had a rare hand transplant to help her become a doctor.
Becca Heritage had been enjoying her first weeks at University of Southampton when she became ill.
Doctors later discovered she had meningitis in November 2018 - a diagnosis that would change her life forever.
Her parents were told to expect the worst - but medical staff were able to save her life by amputating both legs and most of her fingers.
She self-referred herself to undergo a hand transplant - and would go on to become the ninth person in the UK to have it done.
Becca Heritage had been enjoying her first weeks at University of Southampton when she became ill.
Doctors later discovered she had meningitis in November 2018 - a diagnosis that would change her life forever.
Her parents were told to expect the worst - but medical staff were able to save her life by amputating both legs and most of her fingers.
She self-referred herself to undergo a hand transplant - and would go on to become the ninth person in the UK to have it done.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I'm Becca Heritage. So I just started uni in Southampton. I was about five or six
00:05weeks in. I had a friend visiting from home, we had a nice evening together. I
00:10went to bed feeling perfectly normal, really well, and then in the night I woke
00:14up vomiting and that wouldn't stop. So I ended up going into A&E and they were
00:18about to send me home after giving me some anti-sickness medications and then
00:23I started showing signs of sepsis. So I had a really high temperature, my blood
00:28pressure like sank right down, my heart rate was really high and I felt really
00:31like clammy and unwell. So that all happened very quickly and then my
00:37parents came to Southampton because they basically couldn't cool me down fast
00:42enough so they were putting me in intensive care. So I was in a coma for
00:45two weeks and stayed in intensive care for six weeks and during that time my
00:50family were told to kind of prepare for the worst, that my organs were failing
00:53from the sepsis and then again when my brain had swollen with the meningitis.
00:58So it was a hard time for them but I woke up and could see kind of the
01:04damage had been done to my body, so like my hands and feet had turned back and I
01:08had all these patches over my skin. From there on it was kind of lots of
01:12surgeries to try and make the most of what I had, so trying to save my skin, so
01:18lots of grafting and then they were trying to save my fingers and my feet
01:22but realistically they were already gone. So I had my fingers on my right hand
01:27amputated in the December and then I had my left hand, most of my fingers
01:32amputated on that hand as well and then in the new year I had both my legs
01:36amputated below the knee. I had a lot of focus on my legs I guess at first and
01:42prosthetics and so I got up and walking within like seven weeks of going to
01:45rehab. So I was walking fine but there was not many options for my hands
01:50especially functional options, so I'd heard about hand transplant so I started
01:55looking it up myself and found the team in Leeds and you could self-refer to
02:00them so I did that. Just a year after I'd had all the sepsis, so eventually went to
02:04meet them, see if I was a good candidate or not, did lots of different assessments
02:08and blood tests and all sorts of things and eventually they said you know that
02:12they could put me on the list. So that process took about two years and then I
02:15was on the waiting list for just over a year and then I got my call on a
02:19Tuesday morning when I'd woken up to go to placement so I had to go to Leeds on
02:23that day and have the surgery. Well at first it's so bandaged up I couldn't see
02:27too much but I saw a little photo, got quite emotional actually and it felt
02:31like a really long time coming and I finally was taking kind of a step
02:34forward for myself and how I'd be able to function. So I was really excited just
02:38to get moving but you have to be really careful during the recovery process so I
02:41found that a little bit frustrating. You have to protect all the bones that have
02:45been joined together and things like that. At first you kind of lose a bit of
02:48function because you can't use any of your hand but over time I do lots of physio
02:54and things that functions pretty good now. I'm really happy with how things
02:58have gone and it was like definitely the right choice for me yeah. Things feel
03:03natural. A lot of the things that in the last year or so that I've been able to
03:07start doing I haven't really consciously had to think about trying to use my
03:11right hand. They just come kind of naturally, everything's felt normal, it's
03:15felt like mine since the beginning which is kind of amazing and I don't
03:19think you'd ever get that with a prosthetic. Well in the lab the things
03:22that you do aren't kind of normal like activities with your hands I guess
03:26like I'm pipetting things or using different like machines and things I
03:30just haven't used before but overall things been pretty good like there's
03:34nothing that I haven't been able to do in the lab which is really cool. So I
03:37think it's given me the opportunity to do this research and then go back to my
03:42medicine degree afterwards and hopefully have extra function with all those kind
03:45of clinical skills as well. I know that it's such a quick-acting disease you
03:50know I went from waking up in the night you know just being sick and to being in
03:55intensive care within 12 hours so it acts really quickly so it's just to be
03:58aware of the symptoms and the kind of red flags what to look out for it's
04:02really important and also there's like vaccination and learning about that you
04:07know helps prevent the disease in the first place so I'd always encourage
04:10people to look into that as well.