A mum is begging doctors to chop her arm off after a tiny scratch she got while saving a stranger from drowning left her with gruesome open wounds and in constant pain.
Jade Harle's left arm has no skin left and an exposed nerve leaving her desperate for her arm to be gone for good.
Four years ago Jade, from Gillingham, Kent was out boating when she spotted someone in trouble in the water and raced to drag them out.
She scratched the skin on her arm on something in the water and ended up going to hospital to get a tetanus shot and some antibiotics as a precaution.
The 32-year-old, who was an RNLI medic, thought the scratch was healing but over the course of the next few weeks the infection spread down to her fingers as she started to develop big black solid ulcers.
Six weeks after the scratch, she was speaking to her mum when she suddenly said she felt desperately ill and passed out.
Speaking to the Mirror, Jade said: "My mum phoned an ambulance, I was totally out of it, I'd lost four pints of blood, they didn't know how, as I wasn't bleeding.
"I had sepsis and I was really frightened, they said to me we are going to have to amputate your arm. This was all within 3 or 4 hours of arriving.
"I said can we just wait and see and have some time to think.
"I thought I can try to fight this, I didn't want to lose my arm."
The hospital managed to debride her arm and she says it looked like someone had tried to scoop the inside of her arm out with a spoon.
Jade was also diagnosed with Pyoderma Gangrenosum, a rare immune condition that means her body develops painful ulcers.
She may have always had the condition, which sees her body attack itself, but it only came to light after the scratch ravaged her arm.
Since the tiny scratch in the summer of 2018 Jade has now been hospitalised with sepsis eight times, each time fighting for her life as the infection ravishes her body, due to the open wound on her arm.
Skin grafts from her own body have failed, as the P yoderma Gangrenosum simply attacks her own body, and even skin grafts from a cadaver have failed too.
She is now desperate to be rid of her arm as she lives in constant pain.
But Jade is stuck in a vicious circle as she can't have an amputation while she has sepsis, and without the amputation she is vulnerable to the infection which could kill her.
In the last 12 months, she has spent eight of them in hospital only seeing her 12-year-old son for a few minutes each day during visits.
She told the Mirror: "We have lost four years. He has special needs, so doesn't really understand but is staying with his grandparents.
"They bring him in most days to see me for a couple of minutes, but I just want to be a mum again."
Jade added: "There's no end in sight and that's a hard thing to live with. I just want this over.
"Every day I wake up scared and it's frightening. I am fighting for my life. I'm just not me at all."
She added that in hindsight she wished she had just agreed to the amputation when it was offered four years ago, as living in constant pain and fear is unbearable.
Jade has started a fundraising page as she is desperate to pay for the amputation privately, which would first involve reducing her immune system to stop her body attacking itself.
If the operation can be done by the NHS she is looking to fund a prosthetic arm with fingers that move so she can continue playing her beloved flute.
