Right now the Internet is understandably aghast at the story of Aimee Copeland, a 24-year-old woman who, after cutting her leg on a zip line and then going swimming, has lost a leg and may lose another foot, plus her fingers, due to a flesh eating bacteria called necrotizing fasciitis. Really scary stuff, right? It gets worse. You can get necrotizing fasciitis from lots of places that don't involve zip lines. As we pointed out in 2010, you can even get the bacteria from a dripping garbage bag in Prospect Park. Have fun at the Great GoogaMooga this weekend!
The other thing about necrotizing fasciitis, besides it being the stuff of our waking nightmares, is that while it is incredibly dangerous, as the ongoing story of Aimee Copeland makes clear, it also is something you can survive (mortality rates are about 60 percent). The man who caught the bug in Prospect Park, for instance, managed to walk away from the incident with both his legs intact. Just barely: he's still got a limp.
There are about 750 reported cases each year, "but about 1 in 5 people with the most common kind of flesh-eating strep bacteria die." For more, head on over to the National Necrotizing Fasciitis Foundation website, where you can read more than 300 stories from survivors of the necrotizer.
Stories like those? Almost enough to make the even filthiest slob a germaphobe. As a side note, if you're an aspiring novelist thinking of using this necrotizing fasciitis as a plot point, the great Ron Currie, Jr. already beat you to it!
