BY the time Juliana Julien visited the hospital last October, to treat a small cut on her left foot that was not healing, it was too late.

Doctors found that the 55-year-old Diego Martin woman was diabetic and the minor wound that had marked her toes for weeks had become gangrenous, requiring swift amputation before it spread across her body.

Her toes were first to go- a procedure she had begged doctors to avoid, for fear of losing a part of her body she had never lived without. But by December, the gangrene had spread up Julien's foot, prompting doctors to amputate everything just below her left knee.