College student had both legs amputated after deadly diagnoses

A student’s “freshers’ flu” turned out to be deadly meningitis — and she had both legs amputated to save her life.

Ketia Moponda, 19, arrived at university eight days before she was struck down with what she initially believed to be freshers’ flu — a mild cough new students get in their first few weeks.

Her memory is hazy due to her illness, but the marketing and advertising student confessed to friends she felt terrible.

And when family and friends couldn’t reach her the next day, worried security staff and a fellow student at De Montfort University in Leicester entered her room and found her unconscious.

She was diagnosed with meningococcal septicaemia, which caused bacterial meningitis, which led to sepsis, and she underwent amputations of all ten fingers and both legs in January 2025, just over a week after arriving at university.

Meningococcal septicaemia – a life-threatening blood poisoning – can be spread from person to person through coughing and sneezing.

Ketia, from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, is speaking out to warn other students who are starting university this month.

“I have no memory of any of this but I’m lucky to be alive,” she said.

“When I got to hospital my blood oxygen level was at 1%.

“The blood wasn’t circulating around my body and my skin was colourless.

“My feet were green and swollen.

“My organs were failing, and doctors told my family that if I woke at all I’d likely be brain dead.”

Ketia’s illness began with a cough on September 25, 2024.

She began feeling extremely drowsy when eating the pizza she bought for dinner, so she took some medicine and woke the next morning feeling even worse.

By lunchtime, she phoned her cousin, saying she felt like she was going to pass out, and they agreed she’d phone again the next morning to check in.

By 8 pm, she phoned her best friend, saying she felt like she was “going to die,” and when she didn’t check in with her cousin on September 27, her best friend alerted the university.

An ambulance took Ketia to the ICU at Leicester Royal Infirmary hospital, and her mom and sister were blue-lighted to join her by the police.

Ketia was put in a coma and woke two days later.

“I couldn’t see or speak, and it was a whole week before I started speaking,” she said.

“Most of the time, I didn’t know where I was.”

The skin on Ketia’s fingers and feet started to shrivel and become swollen and painful, due to a lack of blood flow.

Two weeks later, she caught a flesh-eating bug on her buttocks.

Medics grafted skin from her thighs to her bum.

Ketia was transferred to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, in December, where all her fingers and thumbs, and both her legs were amputated just below the knee, on January 7, 2025.

“Basically my legs had died because of a lack of blood going to them,” she said.

“It was terrible.

“I just kept crying all the time.

“I felt so hurt; it was killing my spirit.

“I woke from the operation and just cried.

“I felt like my whole life had just begun, and now I had to start all over again differently.”

Ketia, who used to go to the gym every day and dreamed of becoming a model, leftthe hospital on February 24.

In May, she got prosthetic lower legs and was attending a rehab centre in Wolverhampton.

Ketia is still waiting to see if she’ll have prosthetic fingers too.

It usually takes a year to learn to walk again, she said, but determined Ketia is already walking in parks unaided.

She plans to go back to running in the gym when she can and is determined to see through her modelling career, she said.

She said: “They don’t know how I got the illness – it’s heartbreaking.

“I loved being active, and I will be again.

“At first I thought I’d give up on modelling but I won’t.

“You don’t have to hide who you are.

“This doesn’t make me less of a person.

“I am unapologetically me, and I want to help others to feel confident about who they are and how they look.

“I’m very headstrong and I plan to break all the barriers of disability.”