UK lawmaker undergoes quadruple amputation

A British lawmaker was on Wednesday set to return to the UK parliament for the first time since both his hands and feet were amputated after he contracted sepsis.

Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay was rushed to hospital in September last year and spent 16 days in an induced coma before undergoing a quadruple amputation in December.

The 57-year-old father-of-one told the BBC that his whole body "went a very strange blue" within half an hour of arriving at the hospital, having gone into septic shock.

Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection that occurs when the immune system overreacts and starts to damage the body's tissues and organs.

Mackinlay's wife Kati was told that her husband's chances of emerging from the coma alive were just five percent.

On waking, Mackinlay discovered that his limbs had turned completely back and described them as being "like plastic".

"They were desiccating, clenched and just looked dead," he said.

Mackinlay recalled that he was not surprised when doctors told him they would have to be amputated and he was "surprisingly stoic".

"They managed to save above the elbows and above the knees," he told the broadcaster. "So, you might say I'm lucky."

Mackinlay, a Tory MP since 2015, was fitted with prosthetic legs and hands and said he now wants to be known as the first "bionic MP".

He has said he intends to seek re-election in his constituency in Kent, southeast England, at a general election due later this year.

Mackinlay was due to attend Prime Minister's Questions at 1100 GMT, with his wife and four-year-old daughter set to look on from the public gallery.