The hip and bottom of mom eaten by a meaty burrow after being stung on the rosebush

Julie Broude, a passionate gardener, thought of nothing when she pricked her hip on a rose bush with lights.

But a few days later, the mother of two was transported by helicopter to the hospital after being infected with the world's rarest and most deadly flesh-eating stink bug.

The bug took away most of her hips and buttocks.

It was last November, two days after Thanksgiving, when Julie, from Massachusetts, United States, was abused by her in-laws.

The 43-year-old man was transported to A & E before a helicopter took him to Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut for emergency surgery.

She was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis caused by an infection of the flesh, caused by one of the most dangerous bacteria: Clostridium septicum.

She stayed in the hospital for more than two months and underwent seven operations in total to cut off the dead flesh left by the infection, which had eaten a lot of her right leg, hip and buttocks. .

The doctors told her husband that it was unlikely that she would manage to get through the night and planned to amputate her but that she had managed to save her at the last minute.

Now, Julie has big scars on her leg and misses much of her right buttock and hip.

But the most courageous speaks to raise awareness of the rare bacteria that hide in the soil of gardens, so that others can become aware of it.

Julie, from Boston, said, "Fortunately, I was in a coma at the time of my death. My husband and my parents had to go through there – every day, it was tactile.

"I was not awake for that, so I did not have anyone saying" you're going to die. "It was all for my family – it was devastating.

"When I talk to my doctors and ask them" where are your other Clostridium septicum patients because I want to see where they are in a year, "they say they are all dead.

"People do not really survive, so I'm very lucky."

The bacterium that causes Julie's necrotizing fasciitis has a mortality rate of up to 97%.

The gardening enthusiast thinks that having a routine blood test the week before, showing that she had a very low white blood cell count, saved her life.

Julie said, "Different bacteria can cause necrotizing fasciitis. My case was Clostridium septicum and this is the rarest and deadliest case with a mortality rate of about 97%.

"The doctors thought I had it in my garden by putting lights on. The bacteria live in the soil and I was stung on the hip by a rose bush.

"Normally, healthy people can fight it. We are all exposed because we are all out. It is very rare that it enters the body and attacks.

"The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I underwent a routine blood test. I was disappointed and I worked a lot.

"The nurse called me the next day and told me that my white blood cells were very low.

"If you get sick, you have to go to the emergency room because you do not have a lot of white blood cells, which is what really saved me."

Necrotizing fasciitis is an extremely rare but serious bacterial infection that affects the tissues, muscles and organs located under the skin.

Julie was taken to A & E by her husband, 53 year old Herbert Rosenfeld, and says she does not remember much of what happened there.

She would have gone into "animal fashion" and screamed in excruciating pain.

After five hours of treatment with extremely high doses of painkillers, Julie says doctors were losing steam. But when her right leg suddenly became purple, she was rushed to surgery.

Julie said, "I started getting sick on Thursday which was Thanksgiving but at that time, my leg was not injured at all.

"On Saturday morning, leg pain started, so I called the doctor and my husband took me to the hospital emergency room in Greenwich, Connecticut. I do not remember this trip.

"I had an extreme thirst and I cried for water. They say that I entered "animal mode".

"Necrotizing fasciitis is very difficult to diagnose because it is so rare and people do not think about it.

"I should have fainted because of all the pain medications that they had given me, and yet I was still screaming for agony."

"After five hours, the doctors understood what was wrong. They were standing over me and my leg suddenly became purple.

"My husband said they just shouted" oh s *** "and drive me.

"They did a scanner that showed a gas bubble from the hip up to my ankles.

"When the bacteria eat the flesh, it leaves a gas bubble because of the toxins that it releases.

"I was operated on before being transported by helicopter to Yale New Haven Hospital.

"They told my husband that night that I was probably not going to get there."

Julie spent three weeks at Yale New Haven Hospital where she underwent surgical procedures that cut dead tissue from her right leg and received large doses of antibiotics.

She said, "I spent about three weeks in intensive care and they saved my life.

"I also became skeptical because it got into my blood. I have been in a coma caused for more than a week when my bodies started to fail.

"The only way to cure necrotizing fasciitis is to know which bacteria caused the disease and give you crazy doses of antibiotics.

"I have been operated day after day until everything is cut off.

"In fact, they told my husband that they took me to amputate my leg.

"The main loss was in my hip and buttock, so there would not be enough structure to support it. They transported me to amputate, but miraculously, they did not have to do it.

By the end of December 2017, Julie was stable enough to be transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she found her children, Camryn, 9, and Ethan, 11.

She was given skin grafts to help repair the holes left by the surgery.

After almost losing her right leg and being tied to bed for over three months, Julie had to relearn how to walk and nine months later, she just stopped using a cane.

Julie said, "After a few weeks, they moved me to Boston, where my family is. It's at Massachusetts General that I've had some other surgeries.

"They had to keep the wounds open until the virus stopped eating and left that black tissue behind.

"Once all the brown objects were gone, they could sew me, but that left the giant wound that had been grafted. I was there a month and a half later, as the wounds healed.

"My right buttock has practically disappeared, so I'm going to have more operations to try to solve this problem, but it's more aesthetic now.

"When I got home, I had to relearn how to walk. It was the hardest part – going home and recovering.

"I went into a deep depression. It's the most difficult thing in my life. I take high doses of oxycodone every day and antidepressants.

"I could only take a shower every three days and it tired me completely.

"I went down to 80 pounds when I'm normally 100 pounds because I could not eat.

"It was a month before I was even able to leave the bed."

Now, almost 10 months later, Julie was able to go back to work and had the chance to survive with just the scars in memory of her ordeal.

The victim paid tribute to her children and her husband, Herbert, who has survived two heart attacks and a benign brain tumor in the last 18 months.

Julie said, "At the beginning of the summer, I slowly started to feel better and go into physical therapy.

"I thought I could never walk again but little by little I was walking with a walker, then a cane and now nothing.

"I'm back to work and walking with a slight limp that most people do not notice.

"Everything is now healed and medically correct.

"The children have seen a lot. They did not know that I was in a coma in intensive care – we protected them from that. We just told them, "Mom is very sick and is in the hospital."

"But when I arrived in Boston, it was really hard for my daughter – she saw me and cried. My son keeps his emotions under his sleeve.

"They both had a lot of tutoring. It makes such a difference.

"In the past 18 months, my husband had a brain tumor and two heart attacks.

"When it happened to me, he had already had a heart attack and a benign brain tumor, so my poor children lived a lot, but at the same time they saw us survive."