A content creator who appeared on Good Morning Britain has described how she thought she had an ingrown hair but was rushed to emergency surgery after losing her vision and hearing.
Christy Collins joined hosts Ranvir Singh and Kate Garraway on the ITV programme on Friday, 25 September, to recount her ordeal. She initially believed she had a boil on her bikini line, but was later taken to hospital with sepsis. At one point, the boil had grown to the size of an iPhone.
Rapid deterioration
Collins recalled: “On the Saturday night, I got this boil lump thing happen, I didn’t think anything of it. On Sunday morning, I jumped in the shower, just normal, I was getting ready to go up to London.”
“It started to puss out, I squeezed it - a bad idea! It was a really bad idea squeezing it because it just made it worse. I put a little pimple patch on it, actually.”
She continued: “I went up to London, it was really hot. I was with my mates and I lost my vision and lost my hearing. I had to grab my mate and be like, ‘I need to sit down, I need a chocolate bar, I need water’.”
At the time, Collins attributed her symptoms to the heatwave and did not connect them to the boil. She said: “I went home that day, and throughout the next few days it just got progressively worse. On Tuesday, I called the doctors and they prescribed me some antibiotics, but they did nothing.”
Emergency treatment
After a day on antibiotics, Collins said she knew something was wrong and went to A&E. “As soon as I got to A&E, I was rushed straight through, it was crazy,” she said.
“I’m still processing it, it was like trauma,” she added. When Garraway commented that the experience sounded “utterly terrifying”, Collins described how the “little bump” had grown. She said: “It was like a little boil that big, I’d say gumball sized. It got so big. I was saying, it was like the size of an iPhone 16 Pro Max, it actually was. It went from my bikini line around my bum and it was that big.”
Medical explanation
Dr Amir Khan, also appearing on the show, explained: “Sepsis can come from any infection, but it is important to say it’s uncommon to get it from an infected hair follicle or an inflamed hair follicle.”
“What shaving around any hairy area can do is cause something called micro abrasions, or tiny cuts in the skin. The skin is our first line barrier against a lot of infections, and those tiny cuts or nicks in our skin, we don’t often see them.
“If the hair follicle gets inflamed, that softens the skin around that area as well, and bacteria that normally live on our skin, particularly one called Staphylococcus aureus, can get into and under the skin, and cause first an infection under the skin.”
Speaking about the cellulitis infection she contracted, Collins admitted: “It was cutting my skin away and they cut it all out.”
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV1 and ITVX.
