A MUM-of-two almost died after catching a deadly “flesh-eating bug” when she cut herself on a rosebush in her garden.

Julie Broude was putting up lights in her garden when a thorn from the flowers pricked her hip.

What started out as a simple cut turned into most of her hip and bum rotting away as the deadly bug took hold.

In November last year the 43-year-old was rushed to A&E before being transported in a helicopter to Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, US, for emergency surgery.

She remained in hospital for more than two months and had seven surgeries in to cut out dead flesh left behind by the infection, caused by clostridium septicum bacteria – often found in soil.

Doctors told her husband that it was unlikely she would make it through the night and planned to amputate her leg, but managed to spare it at the last minute.

Now Julie has scarring down her leg and is missing a large part of her right buttock and hip.

Julie, from Boston, Massachusetts, said: “Luckily I was in a coma during the time I almost died. My husband and parents had to go through that – every day was touch and go.

“When I talk to my doctors and ask ‘where are your other clostridium septicum patients because I want to see where they are in a year’ they say they’re all dead.

“People really don’t survive this so I’m considered very, very lucky.”

The bacteria that caused Julie’s necrotising fasciitis is believed to have a mortality rate of up to 97 per cent.

The keen gardener believes having a routine blood test the week before, which showed she had a very low white blood cell count, saved her life.

“Normally people who are healthy can fight it. We’re all exposed to it because we all go outside. It’s very rare that it enters the body and attacks,” Julie said.

“On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I'd had a routine blood test. I’d been run down and working a lot.

“The nurse called me the next day and said my white blood cells were very low.

“She said ‘if you get sick you need to go to the emergency room because you don’t have many white blood cells.’ That’s what saved me really.”

On the Saturday – two days after Thanksgiving – Julie was taken to A&E by her husband, Herbert Rosenfeld, 53, screaming in excruciating pain.

After five hours on extremely high doses of painkillers, Julie said doctors were at a loss but when Julie’s right leg suddenly turned purple and she was rushed to surgery.

“I should have been passed out by then from all the pain medication they'd given me, yet I was still screaming in agony,” Julie said.

“After five hours the doctors figured out what was wrong. They were standing over me and my leg suddenly turned a deep purple.

“They did a CAT scan which showed a gas bubble from my hip down to my ankles.

“When the bacteria eats the flesh it leaves behind a gas bubble due to the toxins it releases.

“They told my husband that night the chances were I wasn’t going to make it.”

Julie spent three weeks in Yale New Haven Hospital where she had surgeries to cut away the dead tissue from her right leg and was given high doses of antibiotics.

“I also became septic because it got into my blood. I was in an induced coma for over a week when my organs started to fail,” she said.

“The only way to cure necrotising fasciitis is to find out what bacteria caused it and put you on crazy doses of antibiotics.

“The main loss was in my hip and my buttock so there wasn’t going to be enough structure left to support it. They wheeled me away to amputate but then, by some miracle, they didn’t have to.

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

“Once all the brown dead stuff was gone they could sew me up, but that left the giant wound which was grafted. I was there another month and a half while the wounds healed.

“My right buttock is pretty much gone so I’m going to have more surgery to try and fix that but that’s more cosmetic now.”

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

There she was given skin grafts to help patch up the holes left by surgery.

After almost losing her right leg and being bed-bound for more than three months, Julie had to learn to walk again and nine months later she has just stopped using a walking stick.

“When I came home I had to learn to walk again. That was the hardest part – coming home and recovering,” Julie said.

“I went into a deep depression. It’s been the hardest thing in my life. I’m taking high doses of Oxycodone every day and anti-depressants.

“I could only shower every third day and that would tire me out completely.”

Now, almost ten months later, Julie has been able to return to work and is lucky enough to have survived with just the scars as a memory of her ordeal.

“At the beginning of this summer I slowly started to feel better and go to physical therapy,” she said.

“I thought I might never walk again but gradually I was walking with a walker, then a cane and now nothing.

“I’m back at work and walking around with a slight limp that most people don’t notice.

“Everything is now healed and medically okay.

“In that same time period, over the past 18 months, my husband had a brain tumour and two heart attacks.

“When this happened to me, he’d already had a heart attack and a benign brain tumour so my poor kids have been through a lot, but at the same time they’ve seen us survive it all.”