Back at work, amputation surgeon who lost both his legs to sepsis
FOR surgeon Neil Hopper it was an operation he had carried out hundreds of times.
But on this occasion the amputation was anything but routine because it was the first surgery he had performed since he had his own legs taken off.
Mr Hopper, 43, was forced to have a double below-the-knee amputation after contracting sepsis.
It has given him a whole new view of what his work means to his patients.
Tv cameras were on hand to record his return to the operating theatre to perform an amputation at Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.
Speaking ahead of the surgery, Mr Hopper said: ‘This is an operation I’ve done hundreds of times before throughout my career so, yeah, I feel ready for it but I’m nervous.’
The operation went well and the patient is recovering but the vascular surgeon said he now feels differently because he knows exactly what is coming next for them.
‘Previously this would have been the end of my relationship with my patient but now I know this is where it actually starts,’ he explained.
Mr Hopper, a father-of-two, was taken ill last April and was falling in and out of consciousness when an ambulance crew arrived to tend to him. At the time he was complaining of sore feet.
Recalling his experience, he told the BBC: ‘I looked down and I could see my feet were blue. I woke up after the operation and I couldn’t work out if they’d done it or not because I could feel my feet were still there. It was only when I was a bit more with it that I could look down and just remember seeing the bedclothes were flat where my feet would be.
‘I’ve done this operation hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Never knew what it was like. Now I know exactly what it’s like to have one of the operations I perform.’ Sepsis, known as the ‘silent killer’, develops when an infection such as blood poisoning sparks a violent immune response in which the body attacks its own organs.
The condition is notoriously difficult to diagnose until it has engulfed the body, but if it is caught early, antibiotics can control the infection. Nearly 250,000 people develop sepsis in the Uk each year and 48,000 die. The Daily Mail launched the End the Sepsis Scandal campaign with the UK Sepsis Trust in January 2016 to raise awareness of symptoms among patients and staff.
Following his own experience, Mr Hopper wants to make sure that all amputee patients have access to the best possible rehabilitation following surgery.
‘The care of patients in the community, especially amputees, has… been whittled down to below the bare minimum,’ he said. ‘In other fields it would be an outrage what happens to these patients.’
Mr Hopper, who now has prosthetic legs, underwent rehabilitation in Plymouth but he had to wait nearly two months after leaving hospital and wants to see referrals happen much quicker.
‘I’ve spoken to lots of patients and the hardest part is the bit between leaving hospital and coming here,’ he said.
Mr Hopper said that going to the gym helped to get him back to work in only six months, but he had to pay privately to see a specialist personal trainer, who set ambitious targets for him.
He will feature on BBC Inside Out West on BBC One West at 7.30pm tonight. The programme will be available on the iPlayer afterwards.