news, local-news

LAUNCESTON woman Tamara Lowe knew she was in trouble as she sprawled exhausted on the North Esk River mud flats clutching her four-year-old daughter whom she had just rescued in her arms. But she didn't know just how much trouble. Her frantic struggle across the mud flats to grab her severely disabled daughter before she sank into the water left Ms Lowe with a deep gash on one leg that became gangrenous. It was 2009. Ms Lowe was told she might lose her leg. For the first 10 days of a three-week stay in hospital she waited to see if it would have to be amputated above the knee. After four trips to the operating theatre and a pump inserted to drain the wound, doctors told her they could treat her with a particularly strong antibiotic that might clear the infection and save her leg. But they could not guarantee that she would keep the baby she was carrying. ``I was 12 weeks pregnant _ I had to choose between keeping my baby and saving my leg,'' she said yesterday. Ms Lowe made the difficult choice of saving her leg, mindful of her husband and children at home. The couple have seven children, four of whom have a disability. The antibiotics worked but it took months for her leg to heal. So Ms Lowe is pleased that there is a community discussion again about the health of the Tamar estuary and its tributaries. ``When it happened to me, nobody wanted to listen,'' she said. ``But something has to be done _ we have to start cleaning up the rivers.'' Swabs from her red, swollen leg were sent to a pathologist to try to find out what was causing the infection when Ms Lowe was rushed to hospital. ``The pathologist rang my doctor and asked what country I had come from and where I had been because they'd found bizarre things in my leg causing the gangrene that weren't consistent with a first-world country,'' she said. Ms Lowe's trauma started after her then four-year-old daughter with severe autism went missing from the family's home. Ms Lowe got a call to say that she had been seen down on the North Esk mud flats, behind Churchill Park heading towards the river channel. ``I hopped on one of the kid's bikes to get there faster,'' Ms Lowe said. When she hit the mud along the river at low tide, the bike pedals locked up and Ms Lowe flew over the handle bars. As she landed, Ms Lowe suffered a deep cut in her knee. Ms Lowe said she tried to follow her daughter, crawling out across the flats, sinking to her arm pits in the mud in places, and managed to grab her just as she reached the river channel. She showered when they reached home but said that she couldn't get all the muck out of the cut.

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