A Florida man nearly lost his leg to a rare flesh-eating bacterial infection that developed after being bitten by a human during the breakup of a family feud, according to an NBC News report.
The man, Donnie Adams, a 53-year-old undertaker from Riverview, a Tampa suburb, sought help in mid-February for a painful swelling on this bitten femur. He told doctors he got the bite when he tried to break up a physical fight between two family members. He was bitten while pulling the pair away from each other.
He reportedly refused to say what prompted the brawl or which family member actually bit him. But doctors believed his story after seeing the wound.
“When I saw him in the hospital, you could still see the bite marks on his thigh,” Dr. Fritz Brink, a wound care specialist at HCA Florida Healthcare who treated Adams, told NBC News. “It made teeth marks. I strongly believed he was telling a true story.”
The human mouth is teeming with bacteria, and many species can cause flesh-eating disease, known as necrotizing fasciitis. Group A is on the list of possible culprits Streptococci, which is not only a common type of bacteria in general, but is also thought to be a common cause of necrotizing fasciitis. Group A strep causes strep throat, scarlet fever, cellulitis and other illnesses, in addition to flesh-eating infections. Some people carry the bacteria asymptomatically in their throat, mouth, nose and/or skin.
It’s unclear what specific bacteria was behind Adams’ case. Brink speculated that Adams initially developed a non-serious infection that could spread deeper into the soft tissue and “just take off.”
When Adams first sought help in an emergency department, he was given antibiotics and a tetanus shot. But the infection continued to worsen over the next few days. His leg became swollen and painful, and he had difficulty walking. When Brink saw Adams’ thigh, he said it looked like an orange peel.
Adams had emergency surgery on February 19 to remove decayed tissue. A few days later he had to undergo a second operation. He remained in the hospital until about the second week of March. Brink estimates that he removed about 60 percent of the skin from the front of Adams’ thigh to prevent the infection from spreading. He used a vacuum device to close the wound.
Adams is now pain free and limping. Despite persistent scar tissue, Brink expects to make a full recovery.
As for his caustic relative, Adams said he swallowed all the bitterness.
“Family is everything, and sometimes things go wrong in families,” he said. “I’m a man of faith. People can be forgiven, and that’s how I feel about it. It was a family event that turned sour between two people and even though I got in the middle of it and got hurt, it doesn’t mean I lost my family gonna hate about this.”
