Texas Man Battles Flesh-Eating Bacteria
Published: 7/18/07, 5:46 PM EDT

HOUSTON (AP) - A Nacogdoches man was in critical but stable condition after three surgeries aimed at saving him from a flesh-eating bacteria that infected him during a swim off the coast of Galveston County.

Steve Gilpatrick, 58, was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, a tissue-destroying disease caused by a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus, when he took ill three days after swimming during a July 8 fishing trip at Crystal Beach.

Gilpatrick's physician, Dr. David Herndon, the chief of burn services and professor of surgery at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said Tuesday the situation is life-threatening because the infection spread to Gilpatrick's blood. Gilpatrick is suffering from multiple organ failure and doctors are trying to save his leg.

how is that funny?

exactly!

I was not laughing at the man with the disease. I was laughing at your reaction!

jaydizzle,

Compassion is for the weak, didn't you know that?

i have no compasion. it just sucks for that guy, he is going to die. and i dont appreciate being laughed at because of something like that!

jaydizzle,

Calm down, I was being sarcastc. You obviously are a compassionate person, because you mourn for a strangers life. Some people around here could learn from you.

Whats sad is how pulluted the Gulf of Mexico is.
There is an area of the coast of LA bigger than the state of Oregon that is listed as dead. No sea life at all! The mississippi river is the nations sewage pipe and the Gulf is the septic tank. Now thats sad!

don't swim nude in the gulf of Mexico, or nude sun bathe, because the Mexican police frown on it.

Necrotizing fasciitis is extremely rare. He got it in the gulf, that doesn't mean that anyone else will.

says you can get it from eating seafood too. It is the most common form of death from seafood, but to contract it through the skin like that your immune system has to be weakened from something else first. If you have diabetis, or cancer or something similar.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the bacterium Vibrio vulnificus thrives during summer months in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Swimmers with weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients or people with liver disease, are most at risk. A point of entry, such as an open wound, allows the bacteria into the body.

Gilpatrick is diabetic and had an ulcer on his lower leg when he went swimming. His wife said he believed the sore was nearly healed. His leg became infected three days later and he began running a high fever.

compassion and empathy are a good thing Jaydizzle


Fanta you meanie

Life is a gamble and there is no way out alive. Personally I want to be sick when I die, I would hate to waste a perfectly healthy body. I was swimming in the Gulf off South Padre Island in April and I will swim there again next chance I get. A few years ago a guy got the same "flesh eating infection" from swimming in the Salt River, NE of Phoenix, AZ. It occurs in many places you got a better chance of being struck by lightning than by being killed by a fleash eating infection.

As for swimming nude in the Gulf of Mexico, there is a nude beach at the North End of South Padre Island and that ain't in Mexico, it's in Texas.

Reminds me of my ex-wife. Kinda brings a tear to my eye Glen, sniffle sniffle

Don't swim in Lake Ontario either...Saw on news thousands of birds dying from botulism....it ocuurs naturally in sediment...but give Gore a few days to think about it...it is probably global warmings fault

i heard the form that was found in the great lakes was only dangerous to fish and wildlife. here in michigan they told boaters and fisherman that it wasn't a form that humans could contract.