Student fights flesh-eating bacteria after zip line fall
[Updated at 3:57 p.m. ET] A University of West Georgia graduate psychology student is fighting for her life with flesh-eating bacteria after falling off a homemade zip line and cutting her leg, CNN affiliates WSB report and WXIA report.
Aimee Copeland, 24, fell off a homemade zip line near a friend’s home in Carroll County, Georgia, on May 1. Doctors at a hospital in Augusta were forced to amputate most of her right leg on Friday after the bacteria destroyed her leg muscles and moved into other parts of her body. She stopped breathing and one point and had to be resuscitated, her father, Andy Copeland, told WSB.
On Thursday, Andy Copeland told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that her hands and her remaining foot also will have to be amputated.
But he said she was showing improvement at a hospital in Augusta and was “extremely responsive, coherent and alert” on Thursday, the AJC reported.
Aimee Copeland contracted Aeromonas hydrophila (not MRSA) in the deep gash in her leg after the zip line broke.
I’m sure people think I’m exaggerating when I announce the end of the Golden Age Of Antibiotics. But stories like this illustrate just how precarious our relationship with bacteria really is.
It makes it VITAL, as I keep saying, that everyone get educated NOW about antibiotic alternatives. Googling for options when disaster strikes is TOO LATE. Get wise. Read up on the topic: you need my expert review “How To Survive In A World Without Antibiotics”. I bet Aimee’s Mum and Dad wish they had read it, long ago. Go here to read about it:
As I wrote in the New Zealand Medical Journal (Haemorrhagic meningococcal meningitis: is it scurvy?20 August 2004, Vol 117 No 1200) after a child had both legs and an arm amputated, we are dealing with a eminently treatable condition. The published literature of the late 1940s onwards has shown that intravenous vitC at 1-2grams/kg body weight/day as a continuous infusion can neutralise all bacterial toxins. This woman was totally mismanaged by ignorant and negligent doctors who still have a misplaced belief in an omnipotent pharmaceutical industry. $100 would have quite likely prevented any amputations.
Mike Godfrey (retired NZ doctor)
Mike…I’m not doctor, but the same thing had crossed my mind. What if they had tried vit C…could she avoid having been mutilated. This is a sad story and it’s a shame that something so simple (perhaps there’s the problem) would not be tried even as a last resort. But I’m sure today’s docs are not that acquainted with the benefits of intravenous vitamin C.
Uh, yeah, Vitamin C would have prevented this. Give me a break.
I sense a certain derision in the wording of your comment Cathy.
Do be sure you know THIS story, which shows the awesome powers of vitamin C and is probablywhat Mark was referring to:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Living-Proof/tabid/371/articleID/171328/Default.aspx
Prof.