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My name is Scott and I live near a little town called Helena, in Ohio. This is my story of what happened to me as a victim of Necrotizing Fasciitis........."the flesh eating bacteria".
I woke up feeling fine, Monday 1-13-97, went to work as usual, about one hour after I got there, I started feeling flu-like symptoms. Left work a little early that day.
For the next four days I had my mother call my boss and tell him I wasn't coming into work, I still felt pretty bad. On the fifth morning, I was starting to get pretty disoriented feeling by now, I wasn't sure if it was morning or night, I just kept trying to get some rest. I couldn't remember if I went out and fed my animals or not, I wasn't even sure what day it was or how many days I had been sick. I don't have health insurance and I remember laying in bed telling myself, "I'll be OK, I can get through this". On the sixth morning when I woke up my testicles were swollen about 3 times their normal size and they felt like they were on fire, that's actually when my family finally got me to go to the hospital. So we went to our local hospital emergency room.
They had 3 or 4 doctors looking at me, and they just thought it was the flu too, but they couldn't figure out what the " red, blotchy-like areas " were all over my body. We all thought there must be something else, more serious wrong with me. I didn't feel "serious" pains, I can't relate to what they say about pain when your appendix bursts, I didn't feel that. I was pretty "out of it" by this time and I don't remember seeing or talking to hardly anyone by this time. So I am telling this story as best as I can from what my family and friends have told me. My mother was there with me the whole time and she said the 5th or 6th doctor that came in and looked at me said "get this guy to MCO now" a medical college in Toledo, Ohio. I guess an ambulance rushed me there, I don't remember.
I do remember a doctor "practically yelling" in my face "you're having an appendicitis attack, you're going in for emergency surgery." That's all I remember, for when I woke up 5 weeks later, little did I know at first what all had happened. But I had the feeling I had been through something very serious. I had many "visions" and dreams about what all went on around me the whole time I was there, but I'm not sure what was real or what was dreams. I had this feeling of a "good and evil" presence in my hospital room with me the whole time. I just tried to ignore the evil and focus on the good, which gave me a feeling of "peace". My family was called in 2 different times because the doctors didn't think I would make it through the night. And I think those were the nights I saw this vision of a "being" or possibly what my family and I feel was probably my "guardian angel". But I feel it was there to help me get through all this. I now, to this day, have a whole different outlook on life, because you just never know what may happen to you in your life, so you should appreciate what you have. And I now feel that life is a special gift, so live it the best you can.
The 1st surgery was to remove my bad appendix. They left me lay wide open to flush out the poison. I think the 2nd surgery was to remove 1 destroyed testicle and destroyed muscle around the second one and completely remove my destroyed scrotum. It now is like the third day after I was admitted, when the doctors came out and told my family I now somehow "got" or was "exposed to" a very rare "flesh eating bacteria" so I was going to have to go into surgery to try to stop that from spreading.
I was in induced coma and quarantine for 5 weeks. I also had developed pneumonia by this time, and one of my lungs had collapsed so I was now also on a respirator (which I know I was on for over 30 days, I read that in the daily billing statement I have). I also had to go into a hyperbaric chamber (oxygen) treatments a couple times a day for awhile. So it's now time for me to go into surgery for the 3rd time to remove the large area of destroyed skin and tissue on my abdomen, on both sides of where they had made their cuts from my belly button to my penis. The doctors tried pulling all the skin back together in this area but were not able to do so, they did the best they could.
Well I guess by now they realized they didn't get all the flesh-eating bacteria, and I end up in surgery for the 4th time to remove a large area of skin and tissue on the right side of my hip and torso. Then maybe the next day they see it now spreading on my the left side of my hip, buttocks and torso,into surgery again for the 5th time. But the doctors must think they stopped the bacteria and have gotten all the poison out of me from bad appendix. So it's time to go back to surgery for 6th time to close the major cut, wound, from the first surgery. When I did wake up after 5 weeks of being unconscious and doped up on morphine. Surgery 7 & 8 were skin grafting surgeries.
At this point it had been 1 year since this all happened, I went in the hospital 1/19/97 and got out 3/10/97. I was in intensive care the whole time, except for the last three days before I got out. Plus I have extra long "zipper-like" scaring on my left side that starts under my arm and goes down into my lower thigh, almost to my knee. This scar goes way past the areas where the doctors actually had to remove dead skin. I don't understand why they cut that far. I was told it was probably “exporatory” surgery.
Also at that time I got one of my horses out to exercise him, (BIG BOB), by driving him around the farm pulling a buggy. I have a regular full time job at a printing/copying shop during the week, and on the weekends I have a part-time job driving carriages for weddings or whatever, that went OK. But when I got the other one, (BABE), out to ride her, I could hardly get my left leg up into the stirrup to get on her.
I pretty much had to learn how to walk and talk again, because I was so weak after being "out of it" for so long. Overall at that time I felt the skin grafting surgeries were more painful then all these other major surgeries, but maybe it's because I was immediately conscious after those last two operations. Plus over the years it has gotten easier dealing with what happened by talking and sharing my story with people.
I hope by all of us telling our stories it will help in some way to educate the public, doctors, hospitals, etc, about this awful and many times deadly "flesh eating bacteria" known as Necrotizing Fasciitis.
I first wrote my story up way back in 1998 and decided it was way too much and way to long, so I wanted to shorten it up. So Today 02/03/2025 I would like to say that it has now been 28 years since all this happened.
I had over $300,000 worth of bills and that I had to go through bankruptcy to clear this debit.
