PROVO, Utah - A Springville woman is in the hospital recovering after having both her arms and legs amputated.
Tiffany King has a condition that required her to take a medication weakening her immune system.
When she came down with pneumonia in January, she went into a coma—and her doctors gave her only a 15 percent chance to live.
King said she woke up one night in mid-January unable to breathe.
“The next thing I knew, I was in ICU and I was coming out of a coma,” she said.
She was diagnosed with pneumonia, which led to a blood infection. Doctors were forced to give her a medicine that took the blood flow away from her arms and legs. Even then, King was given a slim chance to survive.
“I know how tough she is,” said Moale Fonohema, King’s fiancé. “I was like, all right: she’ll pull through.”
That medicine saved her life, but the lack of blood flow to her arms and legs for several days forced a quadruple amputation.
“I just have to go with it,” King said. “I have to be happy about it. We have six kids. We gotta be here, and so I’m going to be happy about it.”
Her fiancé has stayed by her side every night.
“It’s frightening to be honest, but we got it,” he said. "We got it," Tiffany echoes.
Soon, King will begin therapy.
“I’m going to work hard,” she said. “I’m going to work hard, because I have a family I need to get back to.”
She hopes to get prosthetic arms and legs, but the out-of-pocket expense is thousands of dollars. She is ready for her life to return to some form of normalcy.
“As soon as I can I am going to work hard in therapy," she said. "It all depends on therapy,” he fiance added.
Tiffany and Moe plan to get married once she has those prosthetics and can walk down the aisle.
Tiffany’s family has set up a GoFundMe page to help cover the medical expenses.
