A 50-year-old nurse is lucky to be alive and is still fighting for her life after catching a flesh-eating bug while gardening.

Jodie Wylie, the nurse, felt like her head was about to explode after tending to her plants.

However, she just dismissed the feeling after believing it was just a bad migraine.

However, the 50-year-old nurse was rushed to a hospital, where she was confirmed to have Necrotising Fasciitis.

Necrotising Fasciitis is a type of severe infection that sees bacteria releasing toxins into the blood.

The flesh-eating bug affects the tissue that is beneath the skin and the one that is present in the surrounding muscles.

Wylie, a mother of 2 children, lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Talking about her symptoms and what it felt like, Jodie Wylie said:

I felt like my head was going to explode and I’d gone to bed exhausted and I wasn’t responding to medication. My throat was sore and I was vomiting. I thought it was just a bad migraine. I can only go by what my friend and sister told me because I don’t remember much. They called a doctor and he thought it was a virus and a migraine. My gut was telling me it was more severe than a migraine because I’d never felt like that before but I prolonged going to hospital until it was almost too late.

Jodie is a nurse that works in an intensive care unit.

The doctors also discovered a massive bruise on her leg.

Surgeons had to remove a large part of the skin, muscle, and tissue on her right hip so they could save her life.

Talking about the skin and the bruise, the nurse said:

I had a bruise on my leg which was so painful and mottled and dark. I couldn’t even walk into the hospital, I had to use a wheelchair. I had a feeling it was Necrotising Fasciitis and I told my sister I thought I was going to die.

A surgery had to be carried out after the blood pressure of Jodie dropped and her heart rate got so high.

She was rushed into surgery.

Medics had to cut open her leg and diagnosed her with the disease.

The nurse ended up spending 2 weeks in an ICU unit where she works.

She was also diagnosed with septicemia.

Jodie ended up having 13 more surgeries to remove the disease away from her body.

Her family was told in advance that they should be ready for the worst-case scenario.

Jodie lives with her 2 daughters, 10-year-old Charlotte and 8-year-old Madeleine.

Jodie had hyperbaric oxygen therapy where she underwent 100 percent oxygen in a pressurized environment.

She had to go through that so the bacteria in her body could be killed.

She spent over 2 months in the hospital to recover.

Jodie ended up losing a lot of skin and muscle in her leg, but she is now capable of walking.

Talking about her leg, the disease, and the process in the hospital, Jodie said:

A lot of my leg is numb so it’s itchy but I can’t feel anything when I scratch it. The skin is down to the bone now in some places and my leg gets exhausted. It’s taken me a year to get back out in the garden because it’s questionable that that’s where it happened and I dread I’ll wake up sick again. The children are scared I’ll end up in hospital again and are still dealing with it. If it wasn’t for my friend Mandi staying with me, I would have been at home on my own and I wasn’t capable of picking up the phone to call an ambulance. It has been a very traumatic and difficult time and I am so grateful to the dedicated medical staff who saved my life, and to my amazing family and friends who have been there for me. We really need to act early when the signs are telling us we are extremely sick. I tried to be brave and stayed at home too long before agreeing to be taken to hospital. It was almost too late for me and I’m lucky to be alive.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the nurse, may she recover fast from the treatment that she had received.