Baltimore, Maryland:
Today, it is hard to believe that Sandy Wilson was once being eaten alive by flesh eating bacteria. For nearly two years, from 2005 to early 2007, Wilson was in hospital as doctors and nurses tried desperately to rid her body of the infection called necrotizing fasciitis. The fast spreading bacteria eats everything in its path, including skin, muscle and organ tissue. Five years ago, Wilson wouldn't have been able to take her five year old son to the local park. Back then, Wilson could see her internal organs simply by lifting her hospital gown.
"One of the nurses in particular and my mother helped me look at the wound because at that time I was very weak. And I was not able to do that on my own, I couldn't even press the call button on my own. So, I had them, you know, help me lift up my gown, and draw back the sheet, and I was looking down at my belly and it was this yellow, wax covered, thing, that I felt very detached from. To me, it looked like what you would get for chicken in the store that you would be chopping up to serve for dinner, or, my other thought was the crinkle cut French fries, that's what it looked like to me. The crinkles in the french fries", she says.
The raging bacteria was eating away at her flesh, and the organs underneath. Necrotizing fasciitis starts on the skin and if not properly treated almost immediately can spread to other areas of the body. It is one of the most virulent of infections and strikes without warning. The bacteria usually affects people with compromised immune systems, such as patients with diabetes and some cancer patients. The infection attacks the deep layers of skin and internal tissues, killing nearly a quarter of the victims.
At Montefiore Hospital in New York, research is underway into ways to control spread of drug resistant strep and MRSA virus. Dr. Brian Currie is the vice-president for Medical Research at Montefiore Medical Center. He says necrotizes fasciitis is a devastating infection.
"Necrotizing fasciitis is a lightning spread, people can lose most of the muscle tissue of an arm or a leg, for instance, or the abdominal area, all the tissues underneath the skin can be involved and have to be removed. It is disfiguring and quite problematic and take skin grafting to heal. They're devastating infections", he says.
Survivors describe the condition as rotting from the inside out or something from a strange science fiction novel. To treat the situation, doctors must cut away dead tissue, but the infection can continue to advance after surgery. In a hospital laboratory at Montefiore Hospital, lab techs sift through thousands of cultures searching for any outbreak of the bacteria that causes necrotizing Fasciitis.
"When it progresses and deeper tissues are involved, its just not antibiotics anymore. And, some of the consequences, the treatment almost becomes as devastating as the disease when you have to remove all that vitalized tissue", says Currie.
No one knows how Sandy Wilson got necrotizing fasciitis. The ordeal started shortly after her son Christopher was born. A blood clotting problem developed and she was given blood components from hundreds of donors. Several weeks after she was sent home from the hospital, fluid built up around her C-section and her blood pressure dropped.
She was rushed to a local hospital, and then sent on to a facility specialising in the most dire, life-threatening cases. For two weeks she was kept sedated while surgeons sliced away rotten tissue and drained the noxious fluid, sometimes more than once a day. Wilson says she was terrified.
"When I was a little bit more with it and more understanding of what was going on I did realize that that was my abdomen I was looking straight into and that was my bowels that I was looking at. And that absolutely terrified me, that they were doing that. And I was confused at first thinking that they were doing these experiments on me and that they were somehow turning me into a robot", she says.
For nearly two years, Wilson was in a hospital and under constant treatment as her body fought the bacteria. She was unable to cuddle her son, unable to watch his first steps or hear his first words.
" I was terrified. At that point I figured there's no way I'm getting out of here. I need my abdomen, I need my belly. And, I thought that I was just going to be in that hospital bed and I
was just going to be there until I died", she says.
Eighteen months after the first surgery to control the infection, only inches remained of her small intestine and she developed liver problems. A risky small bowel transplant was performed in an attempt to save her life. That transplant came in late 2007 and a month later she devoured her first solid food meal in two years.
She finally left the hospital two years ago.
"My life, right now, is pretty normal. I am spending every single day that I can at home with
my son enjoying being able to participate a lot with his school. I'm on the executive board for his preschool and in the fall, when he goes back to kindergarten, I plan to go back to school for a refresher for my nursing", she says.
Wilson wants to go on for a Masters degree in nursing and expects to use her experience as a teaching moment for her colleagues. Dr. Currie urges anyone with any signs of lesions on the skin that are more painful than normal to seek immediate emergency medical attention.
He says the longer a victim waits the more damage the bacteria can do and the more serious the consequences.