This April 2005 photo provided by Sandy Wilson shows her with her newborn son Christopher in the intensive care unit at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, Md. No one knows how Wilson got the flesh-eating bacteria, necrotizing fasciitis. In all of medicine, few infections are as feared as this one. It strikes out of the blue, especially diabetics, cancer patients, transplants recipients and others with weak immune systems — a large and growing group of Americans. It kills 20 percent of its victims and horribly disfigures others.
Eaten Alive: 5-year battle with flesh-eating germ
(This is one story that is really worth reading. Sandy Wilson is an example of a person who never gave up. If she had just gave up I'm sure she would not have survived. Its not all about just her. Many people were and are involved in her recovery. She is the main character in a drama that is just to real.
Obamacare would have made sure Sandy Wilson and similar people would be judged unworthy of life. We know better. Sandy Wilson stands in opposition to obama's "death panel" regulators who would condemn her to death because of the cost of keeping her alive. GOD bless you Sandy, may you live many more years in spite of any efforts by the government to keep you from living because of obamacare.) Story Reports
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By MARILYNN MARCHIONE AP Medical Writer
BALTIMORE (AP) — Waking from a fog of anesthesia, Sandy Wilson found she was a patient in one of the hospitals where she worked as a nurse. She remembered having a baby, and being told she had gotten an infection. But nothing could prepare her for what lurked beneath the sheets.
Flesh-eating bacteria were eating her alive.
"When I looked down at my belly, basically all the skin was gone and I could see my internal organs," she said. "I remember seeing my intestines. I thought, 'There's no way I can live like this ... This is a death sentence.'"
In all of medicine, few infections are as feared as this one. It strikes out of the blue, especially obese people, diabetics, cancer patients, transplant recipients and others with weak immune systems — a growing group of Americans. It kills 20 percent of its victims and horribly disfigures others.
It used to be caused almost exclusively by one type of strep bacteria. Now there's a scary trend: drug-resistant superbugs like the staph germ MRSA increasingly are able to make "flesh-eating" toxins and cause nightmarish infections like Wilson's.
"In the first 20 years I practiced, I may have seen one case," said Dr. Alan Bisno, a retired University of Miami expert who has lectured other doctors on this. "Within a very few years, everybody in the audience had all seen cases."
To treat it, doctors cut away dead tissue, but the infection often advances after they think they've gotten it all.
Inch by inch, it devoured the 34-year-old Wilson. Spleen, gall bladder, appendix. Part of her stomach and ultimately, all of her intestines.
Over five years, she had countless surgeries, including an unusual organ transplant. For much of that time, she lived in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, fed by tubes and unable to give her young son a bath, to read him a bedtime story, to tuck him in at night. She lost her marriage and endured unimaginable pain.
"It was like I was rotting from the inside out. It felt like things were just being ripped out of me," she said.
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Eaten Alive: 5-year battle with flesh-eating germ
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