A 19-year-old college student was forced to undergo life-saving amputations of her legs and fingers after initially mistaking a severe illness for a routine case of freshers’ flu.
Ketia Moponda began feeling unwell just eight days after arriving at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, in September 2024, according to SWNS. At first, she dismissed her symptoms, which began with a mild cough, as the typical seasonal illnesses that often affect students at the start of the academic year.
“My organs were failing, and doctors told my family that if I woke at all, I’d likely be brain dead,” Moponda later recounted, describing the terrifying severity of her condition. She added that her feet had turned green—a grim indication of the rapid deterioration of her circulation.
Moponda recounted feeling unusually drowsy one evening at dinner, prompting her to take some medicine and go to bed. She awoke the following day feeling significantly worse.
Throughout the day, she reached out to both her cousin and her best friend, telling the latter that she felt as though she was “going to die.” When she failed to check in the next day, her friend alerted university authorities.
Emergency responders found the marketing and advertising student unconscious in her dormitory and rushed her to the Intensive Care Unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary, where doctors quickly realized the severity of her condition.
Doctors diagnosed Moponda with meningococcal septicaemia, a severe bacterial infection that can trigger meningitis and sepsis. In January, the college freshman underwent life-saving amputations, losing both legs and several fingers.
Meningococcal disease, according to the Cleveland Clinic, is a highly contagious bacterial infection spread through saliva or respiratory secretions. It can invade the meninges—the protective membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord—as well as the bloodstream. Survivors often face lasting complications, including brain or kidney damage, nerve injury, and the loss of limbs.
Moponda, who hopes her story will serve as a warning to other students, reflected on the ordeal: “I have no memory of any of this, but I’m lucky to be alive.”
She described the severity of her condition upon arriving at Leicester Royal Infirmary. Her blood oxygen levels had plummeted to just 1%, and circulation throughout her body had nearly shut down.
“My feet were green and swollen,” she recalled. “My organs were failing, and doctors told my family that if I woke at all, I’d likely be brain dead.”
At the hospital, Moponda was placed in a medically induced coma, awakening two days later. She recalled, “I couldn’t see or speak, and it was a whole week before I started speaking again.”
During treatment, the lack of blood flow caused severe swelling and pain in her fingers and feet. Complications worsened when she developed a flesh-eating infection on her buttocks, which required a skin graft taken from her thighs. Her fingers were amputated in December at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, followed by both legs, amputated just below the knee, in January. “Basically my legs had died because of a lack of blood going to them,” she said. “It was terrible.”
“I just kept crying all the time. I felt so hurt; it was killing my spirit,” Moponda added.
An active young woman with dreams of modeling, she said, “I just cried when I woke up from the operation. I felt like my whole life had just begun, and now I had to start all over again, differently.”
Discharged from the hospital in February, Moponda received prosthetic lower legs in May. She is now relearning how to walk and is determined to challenge perceptions of disability.
“This doesn’t make me less of a person,” she said. “I am unapologetically me, and I want to help others feel confident about who they are and how they look.”
