A County Tyrone farmer told doctors he was a "complete and utter miracle" after sepsis forced him to choose between his life and his legs. Marshall Wylie, 47, was clinically dead for fourteen minutes on a Friday morning at Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Derry, but the stoppage was only the first of many shocks in a year-long ordeal that amputated both lower legs.

Last August, while clearing dumped timber for an agricultural contracting job, Wylie sliced his forearm with a jagged plank. He washed the wound, applied iodine and a plaster, then returned to work stacking 500 silage bales. By evening he felt flu-ish—aches, chills, a rising temperature. His wife Karen, a nurse, noticed his skin mottling the next morning and called an ambulance. At 05:25 on the Friday he flat-lined.

When he woke, Wylie described a radiant light and his late mother beside two of the family’s old dogs. She told him he would be alright. The medical team confirmed sepsis: an immune system in full revolt, devouring organs from the inside. Surgeons amputated below the knee, sparing his thighs only because the infection hadn’t reached higher. His fingers blackened too; three digits were later removed.

1. Skin the colour of burnt pork — mottled, peeling, blistered
2. Digits turning charcoal — four fingertips and two thumbs lost
3. Ears and lips darkened — early signs of circulatory shutdown

While ventilated in a coma, Wylie spent nine months across three hospitals. He defied predictions by standing on prosthetic limbs within three weeks of waking. The physical recovery was brutal, but the emotional toll on his wife and 12-year-old son Aaron cut deeper. "Mum and I never saw you," Aaron sobbed one evening; the boy had grown up watching his father work 18-hour days on the farm.

Wylie’s second chance came when a farmer friend from New Zealand visited the hospital. Back home, the friend scratched his arm and developed the same symptoms. His wife, remembering Wylie’s story, rushed him to Christchurch Hospital. Antibiotics were started within the golden hour; the man survived. "I got a knock on the door to help others," Wylie says. "I’m not wasting it."

On Friday the campaign “Check Your Cut—Farmers vs Sepsis” launches at Balmoral Show by the NI Agri-Rural Health Forum and the Farm Safety Partnership. The message is stark: a splinter can kill if ignored. Marshall Wylie, who now walks 5K every morning and runs the farm from a mobility scooter, will be there to tell his story. "I talk not to frighten, but to wake up anyone who thinks a wee scratch is just part of the job," he says. "Your legs or your life isn’t a choice anyone should have to make."

For Wylie, every new day is a vote for survival. He has no illusions about the future—prosthetics will need replacing, phantom pains will flare—but the alternative is unthinkable. He keeps a photo of his mother and his two old dogs on the dash of his scooter. "She told me I’d be okay," he says. "I aim to prove her right."