‘Happy to be alive’: US woman gets limbs amputated after kidney stone surgery

Doctors told Kentucky woman she would need quadruple amputation to save her life after kidney stone infection spread

A Kentucky woman who unexpectedly learned she would lose her legs and arms during what she thought would be a relatively routine bout with a kidney stone is confronting her plight by focusing on what she still has.

“I’m just so happy to be alive,” Lucinda “Cindy” Mullins – who’s raising two sons with her husband – recently told the Kentucky news station WLEX. “I get to see my kids. I get to see my family. I get to have my time with my husband.

“I just said these are the cards I’ve been dealt and these are the hands I’m going to play. … Those are minor things at this point.”

As she recounted it to WLEX, Mullins grappled with a kidney stone in the weeks before the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. She received treatment, but the kidney stone subsequently caused an infection, and she became septic.

Mullins was rushed to the hospital and sedated for days after doctors worked on her. When she woke up from her sedation, she realized her legs had been amputated. And doctors told her she would ultimately need a quadruple amputation to save her life after her infection had spread, subjecting her to a rare “perfect storm” of potentially deadly medical problems.

“I’ve lost my legs from the knees down bilaterally, and I’m going to lose my arms probably below the elbow bilaterally,” Mullins said to WLEX. She added that a doctor with whom she used to work had said to her: “This is what they had to do to save your life – this is what’s happened.”

The grim news derailed the lives of Mullins; her husband, DJ, with whom she’s been since she was 17; and their two sons, ages 12 and seven, she said. It has also upended her career as a nurse, during which she has worked at the same hospital for nearly two decades.

But an outpouring of community support met her misfortune as word of it spread, including more than $100,000 in donations as Mullins prepared to undergo a regimen of rehabilitation, physical therapy, and prosthetics.

“At one time, I think they told me 40 people were in the waiting room” of the hospital, Mullins said. “The calls and the text, the prayers, and the things people have sent, the little words of encouragement – I just can’t fathom that people are doing things like that for me.”

Mullins told WLEX she had decided to speak out about her life-altering kidney stone episode in hopes of inspiring members of the public to “slow down” as they navigate their lives.

“Appreciate the things around you, especially your family,” Mullins said. “It’s OK to let people take care of you.

“If one person can see God from all this, that made it all worth it.”

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