Woman almost dies from flesh-eating bacteria after 'simple' varicose vein procedure

A Victorian woman's "simple" injection to reduce the appearance of varicose veins almost cost her life, after she contracted a flesh-eating bacteria.

Donna Zavaglia underwent an injection procedure at a Geelong clinic in 2006 that went horribly wrong, with the bacteria stripping her calves.

Near-death on multiple occasions and forced to spend two weeks in ICU before learning how to walk again, Ms Zavaglia has opened up about her ordeal in an interview with That's Life! magazine, more than a decade on.

In just 24 hours after the treatment, Ms Zavaglia was told she might lose her legs. Her condition worsened in the day to follow, when her family was warned she might not survive the night.

The then-30-year-old had gone for a second varicose vein treatment, when she became nauseous and was in “excruciating pain”.

"I felt far too young to have a big, puffy, varicose vein running down one of my legs," Ms Zavaglia told That's Life!

"Two years earlier I’d seen my doctor about the problem and he’d made it disappear with an injection, almost like magic."

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"(But) I could hardly move from the nausea and my legs, which had swelled to double their size, were agony when touched," she said.

Ms Zavaglia’s plastic surgeon Dean White said in a statement that the Geelong woman had contracted the "life-threatening flesh-eating bug necrotising fasciitis" through a supposedly simple procedure, and was rushed to St John of God hospital.

Dr White performed a five-hour operation to cut away the dead tissue in Ms Zavaglia legs, before she was transferred to Melbourne's Alfred Hospital, where she remained in ICU for two weeks.

During that time, Ms Zavaglia nearly died three times and required almost daily operations to stop the bug, he said.

Ms Zavaglia described her condition as like something out of "a horror movie".

"The sight of my legs made me feel sick. They were a patchwork of skin grafts and staples, red raw and mangled,” she said.

“What was meant to be a simple procedure of getting my vein injected, almost killed me,” she told the Geelong Advertiser.

Over the next 10 years, Ms Zavaglia was operated on 13 more times and had to learn to walk again, but the now 42-year-old's traumatic experience taught her to "not sweat the small stuff".

"I've learned not to let something as silly as a varicose vein get me down."