Woman dies from flesh eating bacteria in NC..scary stuff

[Grimmlok]

N.C. Woman Dies of Flesh-Eating Bacteria
Mar 09 8:20 PM US/Eastern
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DUNN, N.C.


North Carolina health officials are investigating the death of a woman who died last week of a flesh-eating bacteria three days after accidentally jamming her hand in a wheelchair while working at a nursing home.

Nursing assistant Sharron Bishop, 44, died Feb. 27. A doctor said a rare flesh-eating bacteria may have entered her body through a thumb injury and she turned from healthy to fatally ill.

The culprit was a rare invasive form of group A streptococcal bacteria, said Debbie Crane, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Human Services. The noninvasive form is widespread and is commonly known for causing strep throat, she said.

"It's kind of like getting bitten by a shark or struck by lightning," she said. "It's not something that spreads to the community."

North Carolina gets about 125 reports of the invasive form of strep annually, and about 10 percent are fatal, she said.

David Bishop said doctors at UNC Hospitals, where Sharron Bishop died, have told him it's impossible to know how his wife contracted the rare infection.

"The UNC doctors said she could have picked it up at the gas station, at the grocery store, anywhere," he said. "We will never know."

Sharon Bishop complained on Feb. 24 about a swollen thumb. She had jammed it at work and worried that she had dislocated it. David Bishop took her to Betsy Johnson Regional Hospital, where doctors gave her pain medication and sent her home.

The swelling got worse. By the morning of Feb. 27, her arm was twice as large as normal and looked like it would burst, David Bishop said. Fluid leaked from her elbow and wrist. She complained of terrific pain.

Dunn physician Abraham Oudeh diagnosed necrotizing fasciitis, an infection that destroys tissue.

Doctors at UNC Hospitals that evening tried to stop the spreading infection by amputating her arm at the clavicle and removing all the muscle and tissue around her left breast, torso and thigh in a futile effort to save her life.

Harnett County Health Director John Rouse Jr. said Bishop's was one of two confirmed cases of the bacteria that his office investigated in recent days after being notified by state health authorities. He said he believed the other woman, whom he also did not identify, knew Bishop.

Rouse said it would be impossible to determine whether they passed the bacteria to each other. Rouse said the other woman is recovering.

[Elise]

This kind of stuff seriously gives me bad dreams.

[Grimmlok]

That shit moves fast.. it can devour 3 centimetres square of flesh in an hour once it ramps up

[Elise]

Oh please stop!!! You are going to give me nightmares.

[deckchick]

The scariest 4 hours I ever spent in an ER with my kids was when the doctors initially thought a nasty rash my son had was this illness. We could literally watch it grow and his skin turn an angry red. Luckily it was some weird allergic reaction, but I was almost paralyzed with fear for several hours.

This disease seems to show up every few years, then we don't hear anything for a while.

[UndercoverGator]

Originally Posted by deckchick

The scariest 4 hours I ever spent in an ER with my kids was when the doctors initially thought a nasty rash my son had was this illness. We could literally watch it grow and his skin turn an angry red. Luckily it was some weird allergic reaction, but I was almost paralyzed with fear for several hours.

This disease seems to show up every few years, then we don't hear anything for a while.

That is very scary! I'll bet you were beside yourself. Sorry you had to go through that!

This could also be filed under "Men are the sicklier sex"

Two summers ago we went up to Toronto for vacation and made a two day stop at Niagara Falls. We did all the Niagara tourist things, from take the tour where you walk down into the foot of the American Falls and get soaked through to taking the vomiteriffic Maid of the Mist to riding on the jetpowered boats that take you into the whirlpools of the Niagara river. We all got soaked through but no one thought about contaminates or pollutants.

Exactly one week later on our last night in Toronto as we were coming back to our hotel room from the conference we'd been attending Mr. Gator said his leg started aching like mad. Got his shoe and pants off and it was already starting to swell, we watched it swell. He refused to go to the hospital in Canada so we drove straight home with him curled in the backseat in a very sick feverish little ball.

We get home, his leg is now swollen double and bright red, he cannot eat and is unable to walk, sit up for long or anything and he refuses to go to the hospital or doctor. I had to tell him that if he refused to go to the hospital that I was calling for an ambulance and they were forcibly taking him there. Once we got there they told us the same thing, deckchick, that he probably had flesh eating virus because of the rapidness of the onset. Many tests later and they determined it wasn't but for a few hours that I was amped up. Turns out that the Niagara River is rather poluted and he contracted something there, some infection, through a poison ivy pock on his leg. Five days on IV antibiotics in the hospital but I was so happy it wasn't the flesh eating virus.

Lessons learned? Don't get Niagara River water on you no matter how much fun it is.

You Canadians, what's the deal with the Queen Elizabeth Toll road? There's never anyone on it but us?

[ourmaninBusan]

I remember a (semi-)famous Quebec politician named Lucien Bouchard
got the flesh-eating bacteria and lost so much leg flesh he had to have
his foot amputated (left or right, I forget). (Bouchard is a member of
a separatist group that wants Quebec to be separate from Canada.)

Within a week, our satirical magazine FRANK, a Canadian version of
Britain's Private Eye, printed a cover story about him entitled,
"Lucien Bouchard's Separation Anxiety." I kid you not. I nearly
died of shock when I read that.

[SVZ]

wasn't there another case where it was most likely that the woman had contracted it from the hospital? they patients were suing the facility for not providing them full disclosure of information.

[Tiara]

Originally Posted by deckchick

The scariest 4 hours I ever spent in an ER with my kids was when the doctors initially thought a nasty rash my son had was this illness. We could literally watch it grow and his skin turn an angry red. Luckily it was some weird allergic reaction, but I was almost paralyzed with fear for several hours.

This disease seems to show up every few years, then we don't hear anything for a while.

I hate when doctors get things so very wrong. When my brother was 3 my parents were told he had cancer and only had about 8 months to live, Turned out to be something totally different. My mum said my Dad almost punched the doctor!

[UndercoverGator]

Originally Posted by SVZ

wasn't there another case where it was most likely that the woman had contracted it from the hospital? they patients were suing the facility for not providing them full disclosure of information.

COuple of cases, one in Louisiana and one in Virginia that I know of. Caught right at the hospital and there were multiple cases of it at the same hospital.

Tiara, that's too bad. Was that when your brother was first diagnosed with leukemia?

[Tiara]

^^ It was actually chronic granulomatous disease he was diagnosed with. It was pretty rare back then so the doctors just left him on medication to prevent his reactions to E numbers. Then when he turned 16 he had a call all of a sudden telling him he had to have a bone marrow transplant or he would die before he was 21. Not quite as bad as cancer but still a pretty horrible disease. He still suffers from side affects from drugs to this day and he's 23.

[UndercoverGator]

He'll probably have to live with that forever. Sorry about that.

[SVZ]

is he constantly on antibiotics?

[twitchy]

The school my kids attended had a policy that children must do their own first aid. Apparently some child had complained that a cut was cleaned out too roughly. My daughter came home with a scrape on her knee from a playground fall that was full of dirt because she said it hurt too much to touch. We got her to soak it, cleaned it out as best we could and applied an antibiotic ointment. The next morning it was swollen and pink and had red streaks running up the leg so I took her to the doctor. She took one look at it and said she'd call the hospital to let them know that we were on our way. PANIC! A week in the hospital with heavy-duty intravenous antibiotics and she was ok and so was the leg. One of the most terrifying times of my life. Thankfully nobody told me until afterwards that it was necrotizing fasciitis, or I really would have freaked. In hindsight, it explains all the doctors trooping in and out of the room who were amazed by how well she was doing. I really blasted the school for expecting that an(at the time) eight year old would properly clean a scrape, but they just shrugged it off. Scary stuff.

[SVZ]

The school my kids attended had a policy that children must do their own first aid

WHAAAAAAAAAAT? do they not have nurses? my god what are schools coming to that they're too wussy to do things because someone complained that disinfecting a cut hurts?