WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES
Father of four Torres Nadredre faced a cruel and devastating choice that changed his life forever.
"They gave me a choice: you either keep [your legs and fingers] and it gets worse, or we just cut it off," he said.
Mr Nadredre ended up losing both legs below the knee and all his fingers bar his right thumb, after a severe bacterial infection that was initially misdiagnosed as the flu.
Before this Mr Nadredre, from Bamaga on the remote northern peninsula of Queensland, had been an outdoors man.
The Torres Strait Islander did not let rheumatic heart disease and a heart valve replacement in 2009 stop him from playing sport and diving, or providing for his family through fishing and hunting.
"I worked full time, also I lived off the sea and land ... I have to buy myself through life now," Mr Nadredre said.
He is now hoping a personal injury claim against the Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service will help him provide for his family once more.
Represented by John Watson of Shine Lawyers, the claim alleges Bamaga Hospital was negligent in its initial treatment of Mr Nadredre.
A TCHHS spokeswoman said they could not comment on the ongoing case, but said Bamaga Hospital complies with the Australian College of General Practitioners Standards for General Practice, and in July 2015 it won an excellence award for 'Improvement in Health Service Quality'.
Staffed by three doctors and 19 nurses, Bamaga Hospital was Mr Nadredre's first port of call when he felt unwell in the early hours of January 1, 2014.
"This time I said 'no, I need to go to the hospital'," he said.
Complaining of light-headedness, body aches and nausea, Mr Nadredre said he was sent home from the hospital twice that day with a diagnosis of the flu and some Panadol.
"I just went home, took the tablets, felt sick and threw up all day, all night," he said.
It wasn't influenza, however: Mr Watson said Mr Nadredre was actually suffering from acute bacterial endocarditis - an inflammation of the heart tissue caused by bacterial infection.
On January 2 Mr Nadredre collapsed, and his wife Kristen had to rush him back to hospital.
"With the last strength I had in me I stood up - I knew something was wrong - I just stood up, walked into the other room, called out 'Kristen' and I just fell over," he said.
By this stage Mr Watson said "he had developed septic shock, bacteria started to shut his heart down."
Medically evacuated to Cairns Base Hospital, Mr Watson said ICU staff spent the next week trying to restore Mr Nadredre's heart function.
"He wasn't getting proper circulation to his fingers, to his feet," Mr Watson said.
"But they couldn't reverse the effects of the endocarditis. His cardiac output only got worse and worse."
Mr Nadredre said he woke from a month-long coma in Townsville Hospital where they had replaced his infected heart valve. Not long after, his legs and fingers were amputated, and he then started his claim against the TCHHS over that first day of treatment.
"To me, when someone is in an unusual situation like Torres - he has rheumatic heart disease, he has an artificial valve ... one would have thought they would have been sufficiently suspicious ... that something was really going wrong," Mr Watson said.
In six months' time, Mr Nadredre and Mr Watson will meet with TCHHS at a compulsory conference to try to settle the claim.
"Obviously the hope is to get some sort of settlement that can get him the financial assistance he needs," Mr Watson said.
"He'll have ongoing prosthetics needs, ongoing medical expenses, equipment to help him with his life so he can do the things we can do but without his hands and legs; it's expensive stuff."
For Mr Nadredre, he hopes to gain enough support through the settlement to ensure he can take care of his young children and his wife.
"I'm planning on just becoming the support for my family," he said.
"This will probably help me through life, I'm struggling, and I'll struggle to get a job again.
"I'm just hoping to get that support I guess, help my family out."