Farmer dies after being bitten by a fly that caused devastating illness

A young farm worker died just weeks after he suffered severe complications from a fly bite.

Andrew Kane, 31, was fully healthy when he was bitten on the elbow by a horsefly while working.

His mum, Rachel Kane, said her son was initially given antibiotics by his doctor and did not seem to have suffered any adverse reaction.

But around two weeks later, Andrew, from Northumberland, collapsed while on a night out. He was taken to the hospital, where it was discovered he had developed sepsis.

He spent weeks in a coma before slipping away with his mum by his side on September 18.

The 52-year-old mum said: ‘He was a big, strong lad. I could never have imagined that a fly bite could come to this. It’s been horrendous.

‘He just started to go downhill very quickly. I was with him right to the end. I feel really broken. I keep going through things in my mind. I don’t feel like it’s real. I don’t think it’s hit me. I just feel really lost.’

Andrew was raised in a farming family that worked all over the country, but grew up in Widdrington Station and spent most of his life in Ashington and Morpeth. After school he followed in his family’s footsteps and worked as a contract farmer.

Andrew had been working with his sister on a farm in Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, when the fly bit him on the elbow. After her son returned home with a red mark on his arm, Rachel persuaded him to go to the doctors.

‘You think it’s gone red and it’s itchy and you think it’s getting better. But the hole in his arm never seemed to heal,’ Rachel said.

Andrew was given antibiotics and appeared to be recovering. But two weeks later he collapsed in a Morpeth bar while out for a drink with a friend.

He was taken to Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Cramlington, by ambulance, where medics discovered he had gone into septic shock.

Andrew spent the next five weeks in hospital battling the infection. He was transferred to Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital. The dad-of-one was initially put in an induced coma, before showing some signs that he might recover.

‘They had him sedated, then he came round from that, then there was hope that he was getting better. They had all sorts of hope for him,’ Rachel added.

‘But it came back with a vengeance and started spreading really quickly, and his organs started shutting down. I stayed with him all the time in the hospital. I found it very hard to just go away. Even when he came round. At night, they were sending me home.”

Rachel believes her son knew he was going to die. But even while he was gravely ill, caring Andrew was asking his mum to buy presents for the nurses taking care of him.

‘He kept asking if I had told his friends he was in hospital,’ she explained.

‘He said if I didn’t tell them they wouldn’t know to come to his funeral.. He was making me bring chocolates in for the nurses who were bathing him.. I think he knew. He wanted to thank them.’

Since Andrew’s death, Rachel has realised just how popular her son was.

‘He was such a big character. He was very funny and he was very caring. He was a family man.’

Andrew also leaves daughter Skylar, sisters Antoinette and Ellesse and nephew Hunter. He will be laid to rest following a funeral at St Mary’s Church in Morpeth on Thursday.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.