Quadruple amputee: 'Wear mask to protect people like me'

Caroline Coster says she still needs protection from the virus despite contracting it in March

A woman who lost her feet and hands after contracting Covid-19 and sepsis has urged people to distance and wear a mask to "protect people like me".

Caroline Coster, 58 and from Bedford, was recovering from coronavirus in March when she developed sepsis and had to have a quadruple amputation.

She said: "I have lowered immunity because of sepsis, I have no antibodies to Covid, I could get it again."

The teacher asked people to "please take the coronavirus seriously".

She paid a visit to her former school wearing her new prosthetics

The "loveliest messages" from pupils past and present and the support of the school paid a "big part of my recovery", she said

While in recovery from Covid-19 the mother-of-two developed sepsis, an extreme reaction to infection that causes vital organs to shut down.

She almost died twice while in a medically induced coma at Bedford Hospital.

She recovered but her hands and feet had been deprived of blood and had to be amputated.

Mrs Coster's family was twice told to say goodbye to her, before doctors at Bedford Hospital decided to continue with treatment

Mrs Coster said before she contracted coronavirus she was "walking miles every day".

"Please wear a mask, please keep your distance, please take Covid-19 seriously," she said

"It's an awful illness.. it could have broken me but it didn't."

The teacher has done charity work in Kenya for the Make a Difference Foundation and said her situation was "not hardship like I've seen out there"

Mrs Coster paid tribute to her GP and the staff at the hospitals where she was treated and added she planned "to have a full life".

"Losing my hands and feet hasn't made me any different," she said.

She will continue to raise funds for a Kenyan charity and wants to register her dog as a therapy dog so she can take him back to her former school to give the pupils "a different perspective on differences".

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