IT started as a sore throat — the “man flu”, Andy Costi and wife Serena had joked.

But by the end of that week, when the pain and delirium had forced him to seek help at The Alfred hospital, his last memory was a nurse asking him to rate his pain.

The 40-year-old’s next memory came a month later, after he woke from an induced coma. Doctors say Mr Costi is lucky to be alive following four weeks in intensive care.

The doctors had to fight to stay one step ahead of a bacterial infection that began shutting down each organ in his body.

“I was unlucky to pick up some bad bacteria,” Mr Costi said. “They said the odds of it are like winning the lottery, but it’s the jackpot you don’t want to win.”

The Streptococcus anginosus bacteria caused an abscess in his throat, which acted as an open door for the aggressive germ to shut down his body, organ by organ.

Travelling through the tissue planes and bloodstream, it first went to his lungs, then it shut down his kidneys and then his liver. He endured six surgeries in the first 10 days.

Serena — the first person he met on arrival in Australia five years ago — sent daily updates to his family in the UK.

Each night, after a 10 to 20-hour shift by her husband’s bedside, she would send him a text detailing what had happened to him that day; a digital postcard she hoped they would one day read together.

“For the first 20 days, there was not one day I turned up to good news,” Mrs Costi said. “Many days they told me to prepare for the worst.

“They told me if we hadn’t of come into hospital that night, he probably wouldn’t have lasted another 24 hours. But we just thought it was a really bad flu.”

A deep neck space infection is a case The Alfred sees once a month, but Mr Costi’s case was the worst case of last year, according to head of Ear, Nose and Throat surgery Peter Thomson.

“You think that only cancer can kill, but infection can overwhelm you,” Mr Thomson said.

“This is a typical Alfred Hospital big team effort, and you couldn’t do it without each group working together.”

The infectious disease unit lead a thorough detective search to find the right antibiotic, and regular operations by ENT and cardiothoracic surgeons to clear out the infections from his organs, they could finally wake him up after 29 days in a coma.

Mr Costi’s first memory upon waking after being shown a newspaper of the day was feeling like he had been asleep for a year.

It took another two weeks on the ward to relearn how to walk, talk and even write his name before the pair could return home to St Kilda.

Now, almost a year to the day after he became critically ill, Mr Costi has rebuilt his strength and is taking part in Run Melbourne tomorrow to give back to The Alfred team that saved his life.

“We owe them so, so much more than we could ever give them,” he said.