A mother of two was making wedding plans when what started as a sore throat became an illness that required the amputation of her arms and legs, but she still intends to walk down the aisle.
Amanda Flores is a single working mother of two young boys who fell in love with Frank Bordoy. He fell in love with her children, too, and they planned to become a family.
“Christmas Eve 2014, I had had a cold and had been in to see the doctor a few times and I was told that I had the flu,” Flores said.
Bordoy was worried about how worn down she was, even though she'd been to see the doctor twice with continued cold-like symptoms and a sore throat.
“We went back in to the doctors,” Flores said. “They still suspected it was the flu. They checked my vitals and realized I was barely breathing.”
A nurse listened to her chest and told the doctor he should take another look.
“And they yelled, called 911,” Flores said. “That’s the very last memory I have Christmas Eve 2014, being wheeled off on a stretcher, telling my fiancé Frank, ‘You better call my parents. This must be serious since I'm going to the hospital.'
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“By the time we saw her, she had tubes going everywhere,” her mother, Beatriz Flores, said. “At that point, they weren't telling us it was strep throat. They didn't know yet. They just said an infection had gotten into her blood stream.”
All of her organs were failing. Within days she was moved to Baltimore Shock Trauma. Doctors said her extremities were in jeopardy.
“And we could see it,” her mother said. “Her legs were black; her hands were black.”
“After a while, the doctor told us they were going to have to cut her extremities because they weren't responsive anymore,” said her father, Marcelo Flores.
“And he asked us, ‘Are you sure that she would want to live this way,’” her mother said. “We all responded yes. She would live. She would want to live. She has two little boys and she would want to live for her boys.”
“I woke up to a room filled with family members and nurses who told me that I was in the hospital and that I almost died, but the good news was I was alive, but in order to save my live, they had to amputate all four of my limbs,” Flores said.
T.J., 8, and Andy, 5, worried when she was away in the hospital and then in rehab, but her determination to be mom to them again and regain the ability to take care of them and herself far exceeded what doctors predicted. She can even do her own makeup now.
“So I may never be able to wear the high heels again but I can still wear the pink and still put on a cute top or a cute dress, so what the heck?” she said. “My fears will never hold me hostage again.”
She and her fiancé said they are more in love than ever. As a D.C. police officer, Bordoy sees bravery every day, but he said she is the most amazing person he's ever met.
“It’s just amazing,” he said. “Day by day, I am always astonished by how much more she progresses.”
She promised him they will marry when she’s comfortable walking down the aisle, and they're already practicing their first dance.
“He loves me,” she said. “And he says, ‘You have four flat tires but I still love you.’”
Flores said she has a new appreciation for the little things in life, to be able to wake up in the morning and be happy for a new day to see and hold her children.
Bordoy said he hopes to one day work his way up to being sergeant and have her standing by his side as she was when he graduated from the police academy.
