Woman’s horror after a bruise turned out to be a FLESH-EATING bug that devoured huge chunks of her arm
Erin Rhoades, a veterinary assistant from Syracuse, New York, thought nothing of the blemish on her left arm
A 30-year-old woman has told of her horror after a small bruise on her left arm turned out to be a flesh-eating bug.
Erin Rhoades, a veterinary assistant from Syracuse, New York, noticed the blemish on her skin before going to bed on 4 March 2016 but thought nothing of it.
But, by the next morning, the rash had drastically spread and looked "gigantic, red and swollen”.
Erin was rushed to hospital by her soldier husband Ryan, also 30, and diagnosed with necrotising fasciitis – an infection of the deeper layers of skin, including tissue – and was prescribed antibiotics.
Doctors also marked out the edges of the rash and told her to go straight to hospital if it spread any further.
Within hours, she developed a fever and began to vomit, so she took herself back to St Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse.
"They did all sorts of ultrasounds and CT scans on my arm. Then the doctor came in and said, 'This is really serious, this can kill you, you can lose your arm,'" said Erin.
Ryan had to go away for work so Erin’s dad Ben Hawley, 57, an insurance vice president, rushed to be by her bedside.
She continued: "I didn't know where I was and I said to my father, 'I feel like I'm dying.'"
Erin was rushed into surgery to remove the dead tissue between her hand and elbow with a debridement procedure, which doctors described to her as being like 'power-washing' to clean out all the affected parts of her arm.
Within 30 minutes of the first operation, it was apparent that the infection was still spreading, creeping above the line of bandaging which wrapped her lower arm and reaching the top of the limb.
To complicate matters, Erin also suffers from the autoimmune disease lupus, and the medication she had been taking for it had already suppressed her natural resistance, making her body too weak to fight back.
"It started moving up my arm and the doctors came in, trying to figure out what to do," she said.
"That's when the surgeon told me point-blank they were trying to save my life, not my arm.
"I called Ryan and told him that I was going to lose my arm, and I didn't even have a good story like going to war. He's been abroad twice with the army, and I'm just hanging out at home."
When she turned feverish again, the decision was made to take Erin back into theatre.
She had to sign consent forms, allowing medics to give her a blood transfusion and, ultimately, remove her arm if necessary.
Surgeons then removed a large portion of her forearm, revealing infected green flesh underneath.
Ryan returned to be by his gravely ill wife's bedside.
Three days later, she went under the knife for the third time in an attempt to rid her of the lethal bug once and for all.
She recalled: "Before I went in, my husband was crying, my father was crying, the doctors and nurses were crying. That really sent me over the edge. I thought if they are all crying, then it can't be very good."
Thankfully, this time, the surgery was a success.
Erin’s skin was loosely stitched together to allow it to heal before being completely closed up two days later with 200 stitches.
Now, Erin has a 47cm scar spanning her arm, which surgeons ensured did not spoil the special tattoo she had to mark her wedding.
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She is also undergoing physiotherapy and expected to recover the full use of her arm - but the cause of the infection is still unknown.
"Originally, doctors thought I might have had a bite or a scratch from my job as a veterinary assistant," she said.
"But the week before I got the necrotising fasciitis, I was in a different hospital for my lupus and I had an IV catheter in the same arm, and they now feel I could have picked it up from there."
Erin, a keen horse-rider and fitness fan, said the prospect of losing her arm had been traumatic.
"I couldn't stop thinking that one day I am going to have a child and I'm not going to be able to hold it,” she said.
"I even told my surgeon Dr Parker before the last operation that if he got me through this, I'd name my first child after him. He just laughed and said I wouldn't be the first.
"My arm is still very numb because a lot of the nerves were cut, and that will probably never come back.
"But the therapists are surprised that I am doing as well, as I am in being able to grip things and extend my elbow, and that's good enough for me."
