‘Bionic’ MP who lost all four limbs to sepsis ready to return to parliament

A Conservative MP who had his limbs amputated due to sepsis has says he is ‘lucky to be alive’ after being fitted with prosthetic limbs.

Craig Mackinlay, 57, was rushed to hospital in September after contracting the life-threatening disease, which left him on death’s door and ‘placed into an induced coma with multiple organ failures’.

The South Thanet MP awoke 16 days later to discover his arms and legs had turned completely black due to severe blood clots and a lack of circulation, and was told his only chance of survival involved having his limbs cut off.

In a video recorded from his hospital bed in November, two months after he was admitted, Mackinley demonstrates the extent of his blackened limbs and says: ‘The reality is that I probably shouldn’t have survived this far.’

‘The grim reaper has let me survive,’ he added, staring into the camera,’but he’s taken his payment in four of my limbs.’

Yet despite undergoing life-altering surgery, Mr Mackinley is remarkably upbeat about returning to work- and now hopes to be known amongst colleagues as ‘the bionic MP’.

The Kent MP even joked that he might even look ‘a little taller’ with his new prosthetic limbs.

Mr Mackinlay just started feeling unwell on September 27, but initially thought he had nothing more than a common cold.

But his pharmacist wife Kati became concerned for her husband’s health after testing his blood pressure and temperature.

By morning she could no longer feel a pulse on his stone cold arms by the morning, and despite reluctance by both parties to get the emergency services involved, eventually called an ambulance.

After arriving at hospital, Mr Mackinlay was found to be suffering from the DIC effect – an out of control sepsis infection.

He began to suffer multiple organs failure as the disease took hold, and started to turn blue.

So severe was his condition that doctors even considered issuing a do-not-resuscitate if his heart stopped.

Harrowing photos showed Mr Mackinley sitting in a hospital bed with his blackened limbs shortly before undergoing surgery.

‘It went completely black – they looked like pharaohs arms, sort of dug out of the desert,’ the MP told GB News.

‘My wife was told that they rarely see people with this amount of illness in the hospital and to perhaps prepare for the worst.

‘Everything was starting to shut down’

He added: ‘I could see black arms and my wife was explaining what happened.’

‘I think I was still on the joys of fentanyl and all the rest of it by then, so I was in and out of lucidity. But I could see these things (hands) were probably lost.

‘It became obvious. My fingers were completely fixed into a clenched fist. As for my toes, I could move a couple of toes on my left leg but there was sort of a little sign of life in them.

‘Maybe they could have saved a bit of a foot but my surgeon said ‘you are better off having them off’, because you can have prosthetics and you’ll walk far better than having a partial foot.’

After an extensive recovery process, Mr Mackinley managed to take his first 20 steps unaided following his surgery on February 28.

Kati Mackinlay said her husband was initially given just a five percent chance of survival, with doctors at the Kent hospital informing her he was the sickest patient they had ever seen.

Yet despite their struggles, the MP’s wife admits she never thought about saying goodbye to her husband.

Now having dealt with the trauma, Mr Mackinlay says he is ready to ‘get back in the saddle’ and serve his constituents as their MP, and says he even plans to contest his seat at the next election.

He told the BBC: [I want to] get back to the things I really enjoy. Get back speaking out for the population of South Thanet and get ready for that election and try and get some decent manifesto points in with the pressure I want to bear.

‘I’m hoping people might give me the benefit of the doubt and say, ‘that man has been a fighter for himself, he’s damn well going to fight for me, I’m going to give him my support.’ The bionic MP is what I want to be. When children come up to Parliament and go to the gallery or go to the school section that Parliament does very well, I want children to be tugging on their mother’s coats and saying, ‘I want to see the bionic MP today’. That’s what I want to do.’

But although he has grown used to his new bionic limbs, Mackinley is frank in his admission that the replacements will ‘never be the same.’

He told the outlet: ‘You don’t realise how much you do with your hands… use your phone, hold the hand of your child, touch your wife, do the garden.’

The MP says he spent his recovery period reconnecting with his family, in particular his four-year-old daughter Olivia, and says the process has drastically altered his outlook on the NHS.

He said: Being an MP you’re never here. You realise how much you lose and how much you devote to this job. Perhaps you lose sight of what’s really important in life. I think I probably had

‘I’ve spent more time with Olivia than ever. I’m taking her to school. It’s rather nice.’

‘I can’t imagine there’s many countries in the world where I would have survived this,’ he adds, and says he’ll be taking a number of observations and improvements to the NHS back with him to parliament.

Mr Mackinlay says he is looking forward to his return to Parliament, despite the changes, although admits his return to work is likely to be an emotional affair.

He plans to use his return in PMQs to thank the NHS teams that looked after him, raise awareness of the need to spot sepsis as soon as possible, and call for better treatment of multi-limbed amputees.

‘Parliament needs me,’ he says, adding: ‘Whether the constituents want me is another matter…. I’ve always tried to have a smiley outlook on life.

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