Everyday Hero: Cyndi Desjardins

Six months ago, Cyndi Desjardins’s life changed forever.

She was on maternity leave with her son Liam, when she woke with a fever and a sharp pain in her right thigh.

“I started vomiting and the vomiting got very aggressive,” Desjardins recalls.

After 48 hours of pain, she called 9-1-1 and was rushed to hospital. Doctors said she had flesh eating disease and had only hours to live.

They induced her into a coma. Five weeks later, she woke up, alive but facing a new reality.

“(My husband) said I had been very, very ill and they had to amputate my arms and legs,” she said. “All I could think of was my children.”

Since the surgery last March, Desjardins spend eight weeks in hospital and two and a half months in a rehab centre. She had to learn how to walk again, how to dress herself and how to care for her young children.

And she’s been sharing her journey with others by blogging about the road back.

“Every step I take for my daughter or my son, whether its feeding them, helping them, something a mom would do every day I just feel an incredible sense of accomplishment and joy, because I can do it now,” she said. “Every time I get an email from someone who was inspired by the blog, I’m inspired, to push myself even further.”

Check out Desjardins’s blog here.