Father who lost three limbs and half his face to flesh-eating bug recalls heartbreaking moment his son could no longer bear to kiss him

Alex Lewis (pictured bottom left with fiancé Lucy and son Sam) was left fighting for his life after a common cold triggered a strep A infection, blood poisoning and toxic shock syndrome. Doctors gave him a three per cent chance of survival, but the now 35-year-old, from Hampshire, battled against the odds to make a remarkable recovery. 



Over the past two years he has endured countless gruelling operations to rebuild his face and learned how to walk again with prosthetics. Now, his extraordinary story will be told in a new documentary which begins just days after he was almost eaten alive. The show tracks his rehabilitation, during which he had to have multiple operations to reconstruct his face and re-learn to walk with two prosthetic legs. But it also reveals how his young son struggled to come to terms with his drastically altered appearance. As Mr Lewis admits in the documentary: 'I think if I was a three-and-a-half-year-old and I was looking at my father in this condition, then I would find it very, very odd and very strange. I miss that time with Sam and that closeness an awful lot, it's the one thing I think that gets to me the most. I'm making the biggest effort I can to look and be like the old me and try and rebuild that closeness between us.' And despite his hideous ordeal, Mr Lewis says he could not be happier - and describes the last two years as the 'the most tragic but brilliant' of his life. 'Our whole life has been turned upside down but for me, there's a lot of clarity. I feel I've experienced life and death and I am just so lucky to be here.'