MP Craig Mackinlay has broken his silence after losing both hands and feet to sepsis and admitted he was “lucky to be alive” after the horrific disease left him with four prosthetic limbs.
The Conservative MP for South Thanet, 57, will return to Parliament after nearly dying from the potentially fatal illness in September.
He woke up from a 16-day coma in November with his extremities completely blackened, due to clots and lack of circulation caused by his illness.
“It turned completely black; they looked like arms of pharaohs, excavated in the desert,” said the parliamentarian. GB News.
In a video recorded from his hospital bed at London’s St Thomas’ Hospital on November 30, two months after being admitted, showing his blackened arms and feet, Mackinlay said: “The reality is he probably shouldn’t have survived this far. “. .’
MP Craig Mackinlay has broken his silence after losing both hands and feet to sepsis and admitted he was “lucky to be alive” after the horrific disease left him with four prosthetic limbs.
‘BIONIC MP’: Tory Craig Mackinlay photographed at home with his prosthetics
The Conservative MP for South Thanet, 57, will return to Parliament after he nearly died from a life-threatening illness in September.
Mr Mackinlay had to have significant parts of his arms and legs removed to save his life. But the defiant MP has said he is now ready to get back to work and wants to be known as the “bionic MP”.
And speaking to GB News today, he said: ‘The price I will pay for living is a silent and serious disability.
But he seemed optimistic when he said that, saying that hopefully he “could be a little taller” with his new bionic limbs.
The Kent MP started feeling unwell on September 27, but thought it was no worse than the start of a cold, and even took a Covid test which came back negative.
But his wife Kati, a pharmacist, became more concerned about her husband’s health overnight after measuring his blood pressure and temperature. And in the morning she couldn’t even feel a pulse in her stone-cold arms.
Speaking to GB News, Mrs Mackinlay said: “The ambulance at first didn’t want to take him to hospital. “The only bad marker he had was his sugar level, which was very low, but once he had breakfast it went back up.
“They were thinking about whether to see his GP or rush him to the hospital.”
He said “thankfully” they decided to send an ambulance, but when it arrived “things started to speed up.”
Mr Mackinlay was suffering from the DIC effect – an out-of-control sepsis infection.
He had suffered multiple organ failure and started turning blue after being rushed to hospital as sepsis took hold.
**WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT BELOW**
Craig Mackinlay pictured at St Thomas’ hospital on November 30 with blackened limbs after suffering sepsis.
“It turned completely black; they looked like arms of pharaohs, carved out of the desert.”
Craig Mackinlay spoke to GB News about his ordeal with sepsis ahead of his return to parliament.
In December he said he was “extremely lucky to be alive” after undergoing “extreme surgery.”
But today he detailed the harrowing episode in full, including waking up in St Thomas’ Hospital and discovering his limbs had turned black.
Mr Mackinlay’s situation deteriorated rapidly. After feeling slightly unwell one night in late September, he was seriously ill overnight and in the morning his wife could not feel a pulse.
Shocking footage shows the MP looking at his affected limbs before they were removed.
“I could see black arms and my wife was explaining what happened,” he told GB News.
“I think by then I was still enjoying the pleasure of fentanyl and everything else, so I was going in and out of lucidity. But I could see that these things (the hands) were probably lost.
‘It became obvious. My fingers were completely fixed in a closed fist. As for my toes, I could move a couple of the toes on my left leg but there was some kind of little sign of life in them.
“Maybe they could have saved a little bit of a foot, but my surgeon said, ‘you better take them off,’ because you can have prosthetics and you’ll walk a lot better than if you had a partial foot.”
Craig Mackinlay and his wife Kati arrive at the Thanet South constituency counting center on May 8, 2015 before being elected as a local MP.
Craig MacKinlay outside 10 Downing Street for a cabinet meeting on September 2, 2019
Doctors were even considering issuing a do-not-resuscitate order if his heart stopped.
But he took his first 20 unassisted steps after surgery on February 28, marking a major milestone in his recovery after a bleak Christmas period. Fortunately, he said, his four-year-old daughter Olivia handled the situation well.
Sepsis, also called septicemia or blood poisoning, occurs when the immune system overreacts to an infection.
In 2016, the Daily Mail launched the End the Sepsis Scandal campaign following the tragic case of William Mead, who died aged 12 months after a catalog of errors and misdiagnoses.
But despite the trauma, Mackinlay has said he is “ready to take charge again” and serve his constituents, as well as inspiring the next generation.
First elected in 2015, the outspoken MP has even said he will contest his seat in the next election.
He added: (I want to) get back to the things I really enjoy. Speak again for the people of South Thanet and get ready for that election and try to get some decent manifesto points under the pressure I want to take.
“I hope people give me the benefit of the doubt and say, ‘That man has been a fighter on his own, he’s going to fight for me, I’m going to give him my support.'” The bionic deputy is what I want to be. When the children come to Parliament and go to the gallery or go to the school section which Parliament does very well, I want the children to pull on their mothers’ coats and say: ‘I want to see the bionic MP today.’ That’s what I want to do.’
He has said that losing his hands has been the hardest thing to deal with and that prosthetic replacements “will never be the same.”
He told the bbc: ‘You don’t realize everything you do with your hands… use your phone, hold your child’s hand, touch your wife, work in the garden.’