Health and Medicine
PUBLISHED
British Olympic athlete and former American footballer Lawrence Okoye went on TikTok recently to show his followers an interesting but "nasty" symptom he'd developed.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.In the video, he teased, "Looks like a normal leg, right? Watch this," then pressed down on his leg with his thumb, leaving indents that remained for the remainder of the video.
"It's like I'm made out of playdough," he added.
TikTok users of course attempted to diagnose Okoye, with some telling him that he had heart or liver disease. A few weeks later, he updated his followers with what was going on.
"Basically, it's this thing called cellulitis," he said in a video update.
"I had a leg injury a few days ago and the wound got infected with bacteria, which causes redness, swelling, and that pitted edema that you saw, which was me basically making craters in my leg."
Cellulitis is generally not serious, but can spread to the blood, muscles, heart and bones if left untreated. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that you should "seek medical attention immediately if the red area of the skin spreads quickly or you develop a fever or chills".
Okoye was given a week's course of antibiotics, and his leg quickly improved.
