Paramedic ravaged by flesh-eating bug after attending call to help fallen jockey

HER job was to help in an emergency, but after rushing to the aid of a fallen jockey, paramedic Haley Noele caught a disease she never expected.

Paramedic Haley Noele’s life completely changed after attending an emergency call to help a fallen jockey. Picture: SWNS/Mega

WARNING: Graphic

A PARAMEDIC was left fighting for her life after catching a flesh-eating bug from a pile of horse manure.

The vicious bug, necrotising fasciitis, ate away at Haley Noele’s leg, leaving a gaping hole.

The 29-year-old was tending to a fallen jockey on an emergency call when she came into contact with the horse poo.

Bacteria latched on to her skin, leaving her with a tiny red rash.

But within hours the rash had spread, as the bug ate through her flesh, killing off the soft tissue and triggering deadly sepsis and organ failure.

Doctors warned her family to prepare for the worst.

Haley, from Wabash, Indiana, spent two months on life support in hospital, and underwent six operations as surgeons tried to remove the killer bug.

Despite the odds, the paramedic survived the rare disease, which can kill up to 73 per cent of its victims.

But she was left with life-changing injuries, a gaping hole at the top of her leg.

Meanwhile, doctors were forced to remove a large section of her intestines, leaving her with a colostomy bag.

Within hours of Ms Noele contracting the bacteria, it was eating her flesh and causing organ failure. Picture: SWNS/Mega

Haley has spent the four years since her traumatic ordeal, in 2013, relearning to walk and battling other infections in the wound.

The horror health scare even forced the medic of eight years to quit her dream career and she says she “lost everything” — but is “lucky to be alive”.

Haley said: “As a paramedic I had learned about necrotising fasciiitis but I had never seen a case.

“When I first saw the wound I felt mortified. I didn’t understand how a wound like that could happen in such a short amount of time. It was like gangrene.

“It made me sick to think that this bacteria was eating my flesh and turning it black.

“I was shocked. I was afraid that if I survived I would be disfigured and unable to cope with the distorted body image.

“But if I hadn’t gone to hospital that morning I would have been dead.”

Haley said the disease has “changed everything”, adding she feels “lucky to be alive”.

But she admitted to joking that “I actually really did die because this is such a different life”.

“I have lost the career I love and had to move two hours away to be closer to my family, I lost everything,” she said.

Haley contracted the bug after being called to Indiana Downs Racing Track after a rider fell from his horse, in October 2013.

Within four hours of being on her hands and knees to treat the patient, she said she “knew something was wrong”.

“I had a ridiculous fever and I felt this indescribable pain coming from a small red mark on my leg,” the 29-year-old recalled.

“You wouldn’t think it possible, but I felt like dying.”

The rash began as a tiny red mark but quickly spread as the bug took hold. Picture: SWNS/Mega

The tiny red mark started out measuring around 2 x 3mm, but within 12 hours it was 12 x 14mm.

Haley went home, had a shower and went to bed.

But the next morning, her birthday, when one of her best friends came over they told her to go straight to hospital.

“I wasn’t coherent,” Haley said.

Her friend rushed her to Johnson Memorial Hospital in Franklin, where she was put on oxygen and later transferred to Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis.

The rash was around the size of a softball or tennis ball by that point, Haley explained.

She said: “I had surgery to cut out anything that had been touched by the bacteria.

“The wound that was left was so big and deep you could stick a hand in it and not touch any of the other flesh. It was bad.

“I had six operations over a five-day period until all the bacteria was gone.”

Haley spent 64 days in hospital and lost 70 lbs.

Since being discharged she has had to have further surgery to remove E.coli because the wound didn’t close fully and got infected.

In March this year — after spending months in hospital — she underwent a radical colostomy to remove her part of her bowels to finally allow the wound to heal properly.

This story originally appeared in The Sun and is republished with permission