A man burned his thumb while camping and ended up having both legs amputated as a result.

Max Armstrong, 40, was camping with friends as part of a hunting trip in Colorado when he burned his thumb on a skillet while cooking pasta—a simple mistake many of us have made.

“I grabbed a skillet wrong and my thumb touched the hot part, I could feel it burning as I moved it to the table but I didn’t want to drop it,” Armstrong recalled, per New York Post. “I didn’t think much of it as I have gotten burns, scrapes, and cuts from living in the outdoors and being outdoors my whole life. After dinner, I cleaned up the burn, put a bandage on it, and left it.”

Unfortunately, the burn ended up getting infected with strep A—a dangerous bacteria that can have life-threatening consequences. 

“Two days after I got the burn one of my legs started to swell up,” Armstrong said. “I attributed it to hurting my ankle at some point without realizing.”

However, shortly after, his toenails began to turn purple, the swelling in his legs increased, and his burn worsened, seemingly “eating away at his thumb.” It was then he decided to go to the hospital. 

“The doctors were asking me lots of questions, but my eyes started rolling back in my head and I started talking nonsense,” he said.

Armstrong went into sepsis and was put into a medically induced coma, which he stayed in for six days. During that week, the sepsis ate away at his feet, spreading further up his body. Doctors ended up having to amputate both of his legs in a last-resort effort to save his life.

“Initially when I woke up, I thought my legs were still there and then I came to realize that they weren’t,” he explained, per The Post. “I felt down my leg and realized that my legs weren’t there, I asked the nurse and she confirmed that I had my legs amputated.”

While the freak incident is heartbreaking, with Armstrong needing a wheelchair to get around, doctors stressed that he’s lucky to be alive.

“[My nurse] told me that my family was waiting for me and kept on reminding me of them, which anchored me,” he said.