‘I wake up and remember I don’t have feet’: Cardiff grad on life as a quadruple amputee

A Cardiff medical graduate and quadruple amputee has shared her story in a TEDx talk back in May in St Helier, Jersey.

Lily McGarry spoke to an audience about her experience of losing her limbs, expressing: “My brain wakes up every morning and tells me I can just roll out of bed… then I remember I don’t have feet.”

24-year-old Lily, who lost all four of her limbs after contracting meningococcal septicaemia in January 2025, spoke of how her perspective on herself and life has changed.

She said: “If you had met me in 2024, you would have seen a busy 23-year-old med­ical stu­dent focused on exams, friend­ship and build­ing a future I genu­inely believed I could plan.”

via @jcgjersey 

Lily continued to speak of her life prior to the surgery and her love for “running, cooking, travelling, going to festivals, and being in the sea”. She also acknowledged that she’d “fallen into the habit of rush­ing through life, always think­ing things would slow down later, always think­ing there would be more time.”

However, she made sure her talk was not to be “a story about loss,” but instead a lesson in “strength, identity, and learning to cope when life doesn’t go to plan.”

She injected moments of humour into her speech, sharing several amusing anecdotes from her recovery journey. One particularly memorable incident was when her carer was “absolutely soaked” by the toilet-shower.

Lily also addressed the new challenges she encountered as a quadruple amputee. Most notable was a time she tried to make a pickle and cheese sandwich – an arduous process which took her an hour and a half, rather than the two minutes it used to. The cruel ending was that, when she went to eat it, the cheese fell out – a “character-building” experience, as she described it.

She said that these moments taught her the “fine line between determination and stubbornness”. She foregrounded the importance of accepting help from others – not an act to be “ashamed of”, but sometimes “the strongest thing you can do […].”

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Alongside her physical struggles, Lily cast light upon the mental impact of her situation.

“My brain wakes up every morn­ing and tells me I can just roll out of bed and walk to the toi­let, then I remem­ber I don’t have feet. It’s like your brain is stuck in the old version of your body.”

Coming to terms with such a sudden change in body image, as well as mobility, proved to be equally challenging for the 24-year-old “living in a body which society might decide is wrong or ugly.”

What she slowly accepted was that “self-worth comes from knowing who you are and being proud of that person.”

Lily thanked the “hundreds of healthcare professionals” who fought to keep her alive, as well as the carers, charity workers and fitness coaches who helped to “rebuild [her] strength and confidence.”

To finish the talk, she gave words of encouragement to those listening: “If you take any­thing away from my talk today, don’t save love for later, don’t wait to live your life, no one has unlim­ited time and we don’t know what’s around the corner, but we do get to choose how we respond.”

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Featured images via @sepsisresearch