My wife’s cousin lost both hands and both legs to this stuff, got it in a hospital. Finally cost her her life after several years. This stuff is nasty.
I lost my 39 year old fiance to it 3 years ago
My friend’s nephew has been battling this, got in his spine! They actually have it under control, but they don’t claim cured. It’s been about a year. He’s walking now, but with canes. He’s about 30 years old.
I know another kid who has had it twice, both times in his arm. He’s an addict. It happens a lot with addicts.
I should have mentioned the good news about the young man who had MRSA twice. He has kicked both the heroin and the MRSA and has been running every day with his dad, who has run every single day for more than 40 years, without missing a single day.
A third case of flesh-eating bacteria has emerged with ties to Georgia, myFOXatlanta reported.
A landscaper from Cartersville is in critical condition at Doctors Hospital in Augusta battling the potentially deadly disease. That’s the same place University of West Georgia graduate student Aimee Copeland is being treated.
A Piedmont, S.C. mom is also fighting the infection days after giving birth here in Atlanta at Emory University Hospital Midtown.
The new flesh-eating bacteria case involves Bobby Vaughn. The Cartersville landscaper was injured at work when he fell from a tree two weeks ago and suffered a cut to his side.
“He got a cut on his side and took him to the hospital. My son said he was throwing up…They treated him, he chose to leave. He got up the next morning it had spread,” said Amanda Nicholson, Vaughn’s ex-wife.
Nicholson said that Vaughn spent about a week at Cartersville Medical Center. She says the infection quickly spread from his abdomen to his upper back. He was eventually transferred to Doctor’s Hospital in Augusta.
Necrotizing fasciitis is caused by several kinds of bacteria, including some of the same bacteria that causes strep throat. The bacteria that infected Copeland is called Aeromonas hydrophila and can be found found in warm, brackish waters. Aeromonas hydrophila is typically contracted through swallowing, which results in nausea, but it can also infect open wounds, as in Copeland’s case.
Copeland, a psychology graduate student at the University of West Georgia, was kayaking with friends when she tried a homemade zipline that snapped, causing a large gash in her left calf. She was immediately sent to the hospital where doctors closed her wound with 22 staples. A few days later, Copeland’s friend returned her to the hospital after she reported continued pain. She was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis and airlifted to JMS Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia where doctors amputated her left leg. Following the surgery, Copeland went into cardiac arrest, but was resuscitated, CNN affiliate WGCL reported.
“When [Aeromonas hydrophila] gets into those deeper tissues, it has a remarkable ability to destroy the tissues that surround it in sort of this hunt for nutrition. When it does that, those tissues die, and you see the inflammation and the swelling and the destruction that can be very difficult to control,” Dr. Buddy Creech, an assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University, told CNN. Creech says Copeland’s case was more uncommon since she was not affected by swallowing, but her wound got ”infected and the infection (ran) wild.”
Over 70% of cases are recorded in patients with one of the following clinical situations: immunosuppression, diabetes, alcoholism/drug abuse, malignancies, and chronic systemic diseases. It occasionally occurs in people with an apparently normal general condition.
The infection begins locally at a site of trauma, which may be severe (such as the result of surgery), minor, or even non-apparent. Patients usually complain of intense pain that may seem excessive given the external appearance of the skin. With progression of the disease, often within hours, tissue becomes swollen. Diarrhea and vomiting are also common symptoms.
In the early stages, signs of inflammation may not be apparent if the bacteria are deep within the tissue. If they are not deep, signs of inflammation, such as redness and swollen or hot skin, develop very quickly. Skin color may progress to violet, and blisters may form, with subsequent necrosis (death) of the subcutaneous tissues.
Furthermore, patients with necrotizing fasciitis typically have a fever and appear very ill. Mortality rates have been noted as high as 73 percent if left untreated. Without surgery and medical assistance, such as antibiotics, the infection will rapidly progress and will eventually lead to death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis
Prayers for her.