From a 5% Survival Rate to the Open Road: Bianca Bassett’s Journey
I spoke tonight with the incredibly inspiring Bianca Bassett for The Limb Shift podcast. We ended up chatting well beyond our scheduled time because her story is just so captivating. Here is a little glimpse into her journey—I hope it gives you a taste of the powerful conversation coming your way when the podcast launches this October.
The beachy vibe of Lakes Entrance in Victoria Australia, had pretty much always been home to Bianca Bassett. At thirty-six, she was living out a familiar dream, running a local cafe filled with the rich aroma of good coffee and a relaxed, coastal energy. She was a mother in a busy blended family, raising five children alongside her husband. Life was full, fast, and predictable—until a routine day at work changed everything.
“I just felt really flat, like, oh, sort of like before you get the flu, you know, you feel achy and a little bit unwell,” Bianca recalled. It was her twelve-year-old son who noticed her appearance, prompting her to see a GP. Even as she was directed to the local hospital, her maternal instincts took over: “I said, okay, I’ll go to hospital, but I need to go home and cook my family dinner first, which I did… it’s a mum thing, right? We just keep we keep going through. We keep working through”.
By that night, she was admitted. Her condition rapidly deteriorated, leading to an emergency airlift to Melbourne and an induced coma that lasted three and a half weeks. She had contracted Zygomycosis, a rare fungal lung infection with a less than five percent survival rate, caused by a mould occasionally found in environments like hospital bathrooms.
To save her life, doctors had to secure special permission from Canberra for an expensive infusion. While she fought the infection, a deep vein thrombosis formed in her leg. Complicated by a rare, lifelong blood condition called pyruvate kinase deficiency, her doctors faced an absolute ultimatum: leg or life.
When Bianca finally woke up, her reality had completely shifted. “The feeling that I had from a leg perspective, when I woke up, it felt like I was hanging dead, hanging under the bed,” she said. It took a few days to process that her leg was gone, but she refused to let grief anchor her: “I was never really sad about it”.
Instead, she relied heavily on her loved ones and her regional community. “I’m really fortunate to live in regional Victoria where if someone’s having a tough time, the whole town gets behind you,” she noted, fondly remembering how neighbours drove her family to Melbourne or cooked meals for them.
Rehabilitation in regional Victoria lasted three months, a period where she had to rebuild entirely lost muscle mass to learn to walk with a prosthetic. In that protective bubble, she bonded deeply with other patients, but returning home was terrifying. “I was really scared to come home because you do have a sense of safety in rehab,” she admitted, recalling her anxiety about driving, navigating a small kitchen, and being a mother again.
The transition back into society brought unexpected hurdles, including blatant discrimination when she applied for an administrative role. Upon asking for a reasonable adjustment for her wheelchair, she was bluntly rejected. “They turned around and said, ‘oh, we’re really sorry, your wheelchair will get in the way. We’re not going to give you an interview,'” Bianca recounted. Though shocked, she pushed forward, eventually working for five years with Get Skilled Access, an advocacy consultancy.
Now forty-six, Bianca faces new complexities, navigating perimenopause as an amputee, which causes her stump to unpredictably change sizes. Yet her outlook remains firmly grounded.
She and her husband have bought a caravan, ready to explore the country despite the lack of accessible designs.
Reflecting on her decade-long journey, her greatest piece of wisdom is to appreciate existence at its most basic level. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” she urged. “When you come out of a coma, it’s almost like you’re a child and you’re learning all of these new things again… I wish it wouldn’t take trauma or stories like this… to give them that wake up call. I wish we didn’t have to go through that. I wish we just held on to it from childhood, but we don’t. But we should”.
The audio of the interview with Bianca will appear in The Limb Shift podcast, launching on YouTube, Spotify and Apple podcasts during Amputee Awareness Week in Australia, October 2026.