A man diagnosed with an illness so painful it has been nicknamed 'the suicide disease' says the only thing that stopped him taking his own life was the thought of leaving his partner and son. Andrew Lawton's first symptom came in February 2019 when his knee buckled underneath him.
After that, the slightest touch of his leg would result in severe bruising and ulcers; even putting on bandages would cause the skin to die. Andrew stopped going outside, fearing his wounds would cause other people distress as he couldn't cover them. Every drop of rain would cause the skin on his leg to burn.
Clothes and blankets cause him excruciating pain in his leg. The dad-of-one was sacked from his job when his boss said he was too slow to walk down the stairs during a fire drill at the office. He won a discrimination claim and more than £30,000 compensation, reports The Mirror.
Andrew, from Leigh, Lancashire, was eventually diagnosed with CRPS - Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome.
Andrew is getting his life back (Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)
He had an above knee amputation (Image: Andrew Lawton)
IT manager Andrew said: "I was in extreme pain 24 hours a day for three and a half years. It felt like someone was giving me a Chinese burn, like your skin was being pulled in two different directions, it's that burn you feel all the time.
"I had deep bruising from my thigh to my foot and it just got progressively worse day by day, the bruising and the ulcers were like torture.
"CRPS is unusual so they had to test me for everything else first, I was put on controlled narcotics for the pain, but they had to keep upping the dose and by the end I was on six different ones at the maximum dose, which would just start to take the edge off."
Before CRPS, Andrew would volunteer at Formula 1 races, jumping over the barriers after crashes, and would also Scuba dive.
The bruising went from his thigh to his foot (Image: Andrew Lawton)
Ulcers would appear all over his leg (Image: Andrew Lawton)
"I just shut myself off from the world and stopped all my hobbies. It was like my world had shrunk.
"It's called the suicide disease and I had been down that route three or four times, especially towards the end.
"I knew my pain would be gone, but I'd just be passing that pain onto the ones I love, my partner Amy and my 16-year-old Tyler, who is doing his GCSEs now.
"I'm the main breadwinner, I couldn't leave them behind to deal with that."
By June last year Andrew was in so much pain he blacked out, and was found unconscious on his kitchen floor by his partner who called 999. While waiting for the ambulance, he came round, but immediately passed out again, as his body shut down.
Andrew cried when he was finally pain free (Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)
Over the next two days, he was in and out of consciousness in hospital. Doctors struggled to get to grips with his pain medication, and the decision to go ahead with an above-the-knee leg amputation was confirmed.
Andrew had already been through psychological testing to make sure he knew what to expect, but doctors warned him that going under general anaesthetic and waking up with his leg gone, could mean he would get "phantom" leg pain and defeat the purpose of taking the leg away.
He added that he was actually relieved when he was told by doctors he was going to get the amputation, but was warned it may not be a cure, and CRPS could come back at any point in his life in a different part of his body.
Andrew opted to watch the surgery in the hope it would lessen the chance of phantom pain, and said after the epidural went in he knew it was the right decision.
The ulcers would appear from the slightest touch (Image: Andrew Lawton)
"After the epidural, while I was waiting for the surgery, I broke down in tears.
"It was the first time I had been pain-free in three and a half years. From that day I haven't felt any more pain."
Andrew now has a prosthetic leg and is getting his life back on track. He is planning to take part in a skydive to help raise money for others in the same position, and has a kickstarter business to help the NHS with cheaper and better prosthetics.
The NHS website says that "CRPS is poorly understood"
