Girl With Flesh Eating Bacteria Might Lose Her Fingers!

A Georgia college student who has already lost a leg in a very rare flesh eating bacterial infection might also lose her fingers. Her father said in a web posting that she is most likely to lose her fingers as well.

Aimee Copeland, 24, was kayaking and zip-lining along the Little Tallapoosa River nearCarrollton, Georgia, on May 1 when the line broke and she sustained a cut to her calf.

Emergency room doctors closed the wound with 22 staples and released Copeland, a graduate student at West Georgia University. But after her conditioned worsened, Copeland was diagnosed withnecrotizing fasciitis, a rare flesh-eating bacterial infection.

Copeland, who already suffered theamputation of a leg at the hip, was still listed in critical condition on Sunday, said Barclay Bishop, spokeswoman for Doctor’s Hospital in Augusta.

She would not provide any other details, but Aimee’s father, Andy Copeland, said in a web posting over the weekend that her fingers were also likely to be lost to the infection ravaging her body.

He said she may retain the use of her palms after surgery, however, something that would potentially leave her with enough muscle control to use prosthetics.

Doctors are “awaiting a safe time” before conducting further surgery, the father wrote.

Necrotizing fasciitis is often initially overlooked by doctors because it invades tissue deep inside the wound while the outer wound appears to be healing normally, Dr. William Schaffner of the Vanderbilt University Medical School said.

“This often is a very subtle infection initially,” Schaffner said. “These bacteria lodge in the deeper layers of the wound. The organism is deep in the tissues and that’s where it’s causing its mischief.”