UPDATE: |’As soon as I had my hand amputated I felt like myself again’ News

Gill Haddington, 48, from Lancashire, had already lost her foot after a perfume bottle fell on it a few years earlier

Gill Haddington, 48, faced the drastic measure of having her right hand amputated after a seemingly minor dog scratch led to a severe case of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), also known as ‘suicide disease’. This came after she had already lost her right leg below the knee on May 11, 2017, due to a CRPS flare-up caused by dropping a perfume bottle on her foot.

Four years on, on May 11, 2021, Gill made the difficult decision to have her right hand removed following another CRPS episode triggered by a one-inch scratch from her dog Bella, a springer spaniel-pug-beagle mix.

Despite the challenges and “trauma” of adapting to life with limb differences, Gill from Morecambe, Lancashire, says she now feels like her “normal self” again. She is now gearing up to swim a mile across Lake Windermere in Cumbria.

Reflecting on her journey, Gill, who is unable to work due to her condition, said: “The pain of CRPS is excruciating – I’ve had so many ups and downs.”

“I’m incredibly lucky things have turned out the way they did, though.

“Once I was fully awake after my first amputation – I’d gone from quiet and in pain to laughing and joking.

“My partner looked at me, and said: ‘We’ve got the old Gill back.’

“And I feel like I am – as normal as I can be with this condition, anyway.”

Her ordeal began in September 2015 when she dropped a perfume bottle on her foot, reports Lancs Live.

Gill had been dealing with chronic back pain for 16 years and had started using crutches for the first time that year – after being in a wheelchair since July.

Thinking she’d broken her foot, her partner, intumescent salesman Pete, 67, drove her to A&E at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.

But an x-ray confirmed her foot was “fine,” and she was sent home.

“Over the next six to nine months, my foot began to twist at a 90-degree angle,” Gill said.

“It got to the point where you could actually see bone coming through. I was getting a lot of blisters and ulcers which started to spread up to my ankle.

“I was on 30 different pain medications a day – but they didn’t even touch the sides.”

In 2016, after an MRI at Westmorland General Hospital in Morecambe, Gill was diagnosed with CRPS.

She chose to have her right leg amputated below the knee on May 11, 2017, at the Royal Preston Hospital in Lancashire.

She now walks with a prosthetic leg and occasionally uses a wheelchair. But just three years later, in March 2020, her CRPS flared up again – after her dog, Bella, gave her a mild one-inch scratch on her right hand.

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“She just got excited to see me, bless her,” Gill added. “It was the tiniest scratch, literally an inch long. But I knew, as soon as the blisters started, it was going to be the same as my leg.”

Despite undergoing physiotherapy for eight months, Gill became unable to open her right hand beyond a fist. She says the pain was so bad, she couldn’t focus on anything, and she was in constant agony.

On May 11, 2021, exactly four years after her first amputation, Gill opted to get her right hand amputated as well. She said: “I felt immediately afterwards like I got my life back.

“I just feel sorry for people having to live through this pain, who haven’t had the opportunity to undergo an elective amputation yet.”

Throughout her recovery journey, Gill credits her support group, Enable, with “saving her life.”

She’s been able to make friends with like-minded people with limb differences and other disabilities – and the group meets five days a week. On June 14, 2025, she’s aiming to complete the one mile Great North Swim, in Lake Windermere, in order to raise money for the group.

She added: “I love being in the water, it makes me feel good. It’s going to be very challenging, but worth it.”

Gill’s GoFundMe can be found here.