Nicking yourself when you’ve been shaving is something that happens to everyone and you don’t really think anything of it – it just usually heals after a couple of days and you’re all good – but it turns out that if you’re really unlucky then you could end up with your leg amputated.

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This is exactly what happened to 43 year old Tanya Czernozukow who cut herself shaving on her leg then had to cut it off six months later when it became infected and simply refused to stop oozing. Here’s a couple of really grim pictures of it, as well as Tanya telling her story in her own words:

It has been an absolute nightmare. ‘It was just a little nick. I just went ‘ouch’ and thought nothing of it.

I’ve done it a thousands times before so I just put a bit of tissue on it and expected it to stop bleeding.

Within a few weeks it was green and black from my ankle right up to my knees. The pain was absolutely sheer hell.

I had to take more and more painkillers. It was a constant feeling of thousands of needles being stuck into me.

I used to sit with my leg in a plastic bag – there used to be that much fluid seeping out of it, I felt like I was in a horror movie.

After a while it looked like gangrene. It looked like I had a flesh-eating bug. It just kept growing and growing and growing.

It got to the point when I just said to the doctors, ‘take it off. I want it gone’.

When I first came round I got one hell of a shock. There was only inches of my leg left. It was just complete and utter shock. To see it gone was like waking up in a nightmare.

When it happened to begin with my mum told me to go to the GP but I was like ‘yeah, yeah’ but didn’t. I had never had any other health problem.

A week later the pain got so bad I went to A&E and was hospitalised for five days where doctors said it was a leg ulcer and put me on strong antibiotics.

I’ve never felt pain like that in my life.

They did biotherapy which involves attaching maggots to your leg. For 24 hours I was screaming in agony.

By the third time I went into hospital, it covered my whole leg. It was just completely infected. It was too far gone. It was too little, too late.

I can’t believe I have actually got to this point. I have had to be strong. I would love to tell people that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I do my absolute best. So many people say ‘you are an inspiration’ and I say ‘no I’m not’. I am in this position and I have had no other choice. It’s sink or swim.

I don’t shave my other leg any more. It terrifies me. As strange as it sounds, I don’t regret the operation one bit.

I am looking to go back to work. Mentally, I think I am pretty much almost there. That’s the next step in my life.

I am getting a car, that’s going to be life-changing. Once I have got the car I will look into getting a prosthetic leg.

Well it sounds like she’s making the best of a bad situation, but Jesus what a thing to happen to you. It’s crazy how something as innocuous as a little cut can end up having such a massive impact on your life. I would say be careful when you nick yourself shaving but man, it happens so often and this was obviously a freak occurrence so it doesn’t really seem worth it. If you’re leg goes green and black though, make sure you see the doctor eh?

For more amputation, check out this guy who got his penis amputated after a viagra overdose. Too much dude.