Woman nearly loses leg after passing out drunk

Her leg nearly fell asleep for good.

A Canadian woman is warning people about the perils of hard partying after nearly losing a leg following one booze-soaked soirée gone bad.

Julia Anderson had reportedly blacked out in an awkward position, cutting off her circulation for hours, and causing her stems to swell to a terrifying size.

The paralyzing ordeal occurred three years ago, but the reveler only just shared her story recently with the hope that others won’t make the same mistake.

“I was in pain constantly,” the 36-year-old told Kennedy News. “The nerve damage was so bad I was screaming out in the middle of the night with the pain.”

The Ontario native’s agonizing saga began back in February 2020 after she embarked on a “night out with friends.”

“I remember I was drinking vodka all night,” described Anderson. “I was drinking a lot of straight liquor.”

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By the end of the night, the Canuck had reportedly consumed a whopping 20 drinks — and without any food to soak up the suds.

With her head still spinning, the “drunker than normal” Anderson decided to try and sleep it off, not knowing that this one evening would change her life forever.

“When I got home I just thought ‘go to bed Julia’ and I passed out curled up on top of my legs face down,” described the party gal. “I was living with my mom and she came down to check on me because she knew I’d not been in a good state.”

That’s when she realized something was terribly wrong: “She said I needed to move but I couldn’t,” described the horrified Canadian. “At first she didn’t believe me, but she had to help roll me onto my back and then I still couldn’t move.”

Despite going back to sleep, she woke up an hour later to discover that she still couldn’t move her legs. She recalled, “All I could think to myself was ‘did I break my legs or something? Why can’t I move my legs?’”

If that wasn’t frightening enough, Anderson’s nocturnal contortions had reportedly caused her legs to balloon up to “double their usual size.” She alerted her mom, who called an ambulance to take her to Garron Hospital in Toronto.

“When I got to the hospital my whole body was very swollen,” she said. “I’m tiny, I’m only 100 pounds, to them I just looked like a 140-pound girl.”

Anderson added, “I told them ‘guys I don’t look like this, something is wrong.”

Following a series of tests, doctors diagnosed the patient with compartment syndrome, which occurs when “when pressure rises in and around muscles,” usually in the lower leg, per the Cleveland Clinic.

Generally caused by serious injuries or physical exertion, this condition can become life-threatening.

“The pressure is painful and can be dangerous,” the medical site describes. “Compartment syndrome can limit the flow of blood, oxygen and nutrients to muscles and nerves. It can cause serious damage and possible death.”

Anderson’s case was peculiar given that the condition is generally associated with car accidents and overtraining during sports rather than post-party slumber posture.

Either way, her situation was dire.

“I was immediately rushed into surgery because my muscle was deteriorating and releasing toxins into my bloodstream causing my body to swell up and my kidneys to shut down,” the petrified patient described. “After the first surgery, I was in intensive care for two weeks strapped to a device to drain the fluid as I was still huge.”

Graphic photos show the gaping gash in her leg where the surgeons made the incision. Doctors were also forced to hook Anderson up to a kidney dialysis machine, take a skin graft from her thigh and administer several blood transfusions as her hemoglobin levels had dropped so low.

Throughout the ordeal, the patient was in constant pain. “Imagine your leg is falling asleep but that tingling feeling is times a thousand, like a sharp shooting electric shock up my leg,” described Anderson.

After a whopping five weeks in the hospital, she was then sent home where she remained bedridden for another three weeks. She relied on painkillers for another year after that.

Nonetheless, Anderson said she was lucky her complications weren’t worse given people often “do lose their limbs.” Indeed, in severe cases of compartment syndrome, amputation may be required to correct the problem.

Now, three years on, Anderson still hasn’t fully recovered.

“It still feels like my foot is mildly asleep all the time, I’m used to it,” she described. “I can’t walk properly on that foot, I walk on my left foot like I’m wearing a high heel — almost like a Barbie foot.”

The Ontarian lamented, “My toes are starting to curl under, I don’t know if I’ll need further surgery or if there’s anything they can do at this point.”

And the aftershocks aren’t merely physical: Anderson was so ashamed of the ordeal that she waited three years to tell her story.

“At the time I was embarrassed about it, because who wants to be like ‘I passed out drunk like an idiot,’” she lamented. “The shame’s kind of dissipated because it’s been years now, it could happen to anyone.”

She is now using her saga as a cautionary tale against the dangers of passing out after drinking.

“I’ve never been open about this on social media, but if I can save someone’s limb, or even life, it’s worth sharing,” she wrote in a Facebook post on February 24. “NEVER pass out really drunk! ‘Sleeping it off’ is dangerous!! Have some food and water instead and try to sober up before bed!”

This isn’t the first seemingly innocuous movement that has caused catastrophic complications.

In January, a “super-fit” dad tore a neck artery and suffered three strokes all because he turned his head “too quickly” while playing pickleball.