A Florida mom is lucky to be alive after contracting flesh-eating bacteria while swimming at a local beach. She also ended up nearly losing her leg as well.
49-year-old Florida mom Genevieve Gallagher contracted the "Vibrio vulnificus" bacteria after a swim. She had gone swimming with her 7-year-old daughter in Santa Rosa Sound off Pensacola Beach. According to the Pensacola News Journal, the Florida mom developed symptoms just days after her beach trip. Her leg became swollen and covered in blisters and she started to feel unwell. Gallagher quickly went to the ER.
"I thought I had an infection, but never did I think I had a flesh-eating bacterium," Gallagher told the Journal. "There's no antibiotics that they can give you to stop it. They just have to get out any infected skin and tissue. They've got to get it off your body."
Florida Mom Almost Dies
Thus, the doctors began the very painful process of removing tissue from her infected leg.
"They debrided my leg down to the bare meat," Gallagher said. "They took most of the muscle, almost down to the bone, basically. It went up almost to my knee, so it's a pretty large amount, and it's all the way around my leg."
The flesh-eating bacteria entered the Florida mom's leg from a small cut. It caused septic shock, threatening her life.
"They were finally able to get me stable enough to wake me up. Sacred Heart saved my leg, thank God," Gallagher said. "Mila saw me in the hospital and said, 'I wish this happened to me and not you,' and I started crying. That broke my heart. I was like 'Mila, no, I'm so glad it didn't happen to you. Your little body could not have taken all this that's going on.'"
However, she has a long way to go for recovery.
"Just looking at my leg, it doesn't even look like my leg anymore," Gallagher described. "It looks deformed right now. The pain is unbelievable. It feels like somebody took gasoline, poured it on my leg, and lit my leg on fire. That's what it feels like."
The Florida mom will remain in the hospital for now.
