A Colorado woman is recovering this summer after a close call with flesh-eating bacteria, according to Denver TV station FOX31. Doctors say her case is part of a wider pattern of Vibrio vulnificus infections turning up far from home for the people who catch them.
Colorado sits nowhere near the Gulf of Mexico, but that has not stopped the bacteria from reaching Coloradans. Health officials say most people who catch Vibrio vulnificus get infected while traveling to warm coastal water, then carry the illness, and sometimes lasting damage, back home with them.
FOX31 Denver reported on the Colorado woman's fight against the infection as part of its coverage of a summer marked by rising Vibrio cases nationwide. Stations across the country, from Idaho to Alabama to Florida, have run similar stories this year as more people encounter the bacteria and survive to talk about it.
Vibrio vulnificus lives naturally in warm, salty coastal water and in raw shellfish, especially oysters. A person can catch it by eating contaminated seafood or by getting a cut, scrape or open wound wet in the wrong water at the wrong time.
Doctors say the infection can move shockingly fast. What starts as a small wound can turn into blackened, dying skin and muscle within a day or two. In the worst cases, surgeons have to cut away infected tissue or even amputate a limb to stop the bacteria from spreading through the body.
Other survivors have described the ordeal in graphic terms this year. A Louisiana man named Jeremy Noel said he was shivering and lost control of his body after cuts on his foot let the bacteria in during a Gulf Coast trip; doctors threatened to amputate within 24 hours. A Florida mother, Genevieve Gallagher, lost a large part of her leg below the knee after exposing a small cut to saltwater while boating. In Idaho, a woman named Rachelle Winn needed emergency surgery after a scrape from a rock turned black within two days.
Doctors who treat these infections say the pattern repeats again and again: a minor wound, a dip in warm water, and then a race against time. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist, has called Vibrio vulnificus "a very dramatic infection" that can strike people of any age, even though it remains rare overall.
For someone from a landlocked state like Colorado, a Vibrio infection often starts on vacation, far from the doctors and hospitals that know the illness best back home. That can slow down diagnosis at first, since Vibrio is unfamiliar to many doctors who rarely see it outside coastal states.
Health officials tracking this year's outbreak have counted 23 cases and seven deaths in just Florida and Louisiana so far. Nationwide totals run higher once other coastal states and travelers who get sick after returning home are counted.
Recovery from a serious Vibrio infection can take months or years. Survivors often deal with permanent nerve damage, scarring, lost muscle and, in some cases, life-changing amputations long after the initial infection clears.
Doctors want anyone traveling to warm coastal water this year, whether to the Gulf, the Atlantic or anywhere in between, to cover open wounds and skip raw shellfish if their immune system is weak. Anyone who develops a red, hot or painful area near a wound after being in the water should get to a hospital fast, since early treatment gives the best chance of keeping a full recovery on the table.
Stories like the Colorado woman's are becoming a summer fixture on local news across the country, not because the bacteria is common, but because each case carries a similar warning: a wound that seemed small turned into a fight for a limb, or a life, within days.
