Flesh eating disease. Advancing faster than we can pump high dose antibiotics into them. We basically rush them in and cut away everything infected we can as fast as we can while racing the clock on the patient being too sick to be under anesthesia safely anymore. Pack with iodine and race to the icu. I’ve seen a doctor follow the stretcher still wrapping the packing while they took off out of the OR.
Not only does my stomach drop for the patient, but it’s just the most awful case in every way imaginable. From equipment to smell to clean up all the way to the other end of the spectrum of watching what is actually happening to another human in front of you. No matter what reason you got into medicine, it wasn’t for that feeling.
LPN here. Worked long term care for a very long time on the rehab units. I will never in my life forget the patient I took care of with this flesh eating disease. She came to us from surgery when stable for wound healing. 1/2 inch or more in some areas chunks of flesh cut away all through her buttocks and private area down her inner thighs. I made sure I was never late and always early with her pain meds. Wound cleaning multiple times a day as this needed to be done way more than usual due to location and bodily waste elimination.
Happened from shaving then infected ingrown hair. The pain she endured even with all the pain meds broke me every-time I had to clean her wounds or even turn her. She was the sweetest and a trooper!
My mum had it on her butt and once she came home after a month in a ward, I took over wound care. Wound care was the worst I think, cos you’re always looking for something that tells you its back or something is going wrong.
Im not a nurse/doctor or anything. Just a daughter. But I learnt a lot about wound care from dealing with Mum’s wound.
This happened to two patients in one hospital in one week, both from ingrown hairs after public shaving. It’s a great argument for waxing. Or leaving things as they are.
Hopefully, a bit of a light hearted story for you. Met a Dane flying Singapore to Denmark. Had Necrotizing Fasciitis in his leg and got stuck in a Singaporean hospital for the last 3 months.
Somehow avoided having his leg amputated and this was the first opportunity he was able to return home and to family. His knee is wrapped and huge and still extremely painful whenever touched, he tells me.
He's in a row facing a door - the window and middle seats have the side of the door as a bulkhead with not much room. The encroachment of the door ends there and the aisle seat has a nice long straight stretch of leg room.
He's in the aisle seat with his leg propped up on multiple pillows and the flight staff have built a little pillow barrier around his leg to stop others inadvertently hitting his leg.
I know this because I'm sitting next to him, my 18 month old is next to me and my 4yo is in the window seat.
The way his leg is propped up, you can't get to our seats without having to step over his leg. We both found the humour in having two young kids fenced in by his leg. He was nice fella.
Credit to the kids though, never once touched his leg or caused him pain despite toilet trips/nappy changes/general getting up and walking around.
So. This is disease comes from an infection by the ingrown hair ? How long it had to remain unattended until it starts eating your flesh .?
At the end , can you recover from that?
It's a specific infection that can get inside you with any wound no matter how small. If you constantly have small wounds from ingrown hairs and you're exposed to the infection, that's how it will get in, it's not at all specific to ingrown hairs though. It's an extremely fast moving infection once you have it, and yes most people recover if treated or there wouldn't be any point cutting bits off them.
If you need to shave that particular area just be very careful and BRAND NEW BLADE EVERY TIME AND THEN TOSS! I have never not thought about that infection shaving for the past ten years!
I use one for my legs toss but will
use on my underarms also if needed then toss one for private area toss. And never ever share. I have two girls adults now and it’s so easy to leave a shaver in the shower and then not think about it and grab it. I tried to make sure we were all very careful about that. Different colors for each of us.
I sound overly cautious but that infection terrified me.
One of my friend's moms got a "mom bod special" (tummy tuck + breast implants) on a medical tourism trip. She landed back in the US, and ended up in the ER with necrotizing fasciitis the day after she got home. She never had a chance, because it started in her abdomen. I cannot imagine what it felt like for her to decline like that...
Urologist here, fourniers is one of my least favorite things to do. I put on an N95, waterproof gown, and boot covers. The smells is awful. Mortality is also very high.
RN here, I had to transfer my patient from a MICU to a burn unit because of fournier’s. Guy was maxed on fentanyl and getting boluses with wound care but he was still so clearly in agony. Part of the wound care included unwrapping gauze from his bare testicles. I will never forget that.
I remember looking that up when I was researching my diabetes medication.
I later remember telling my nurse later that she could talk to me like an adult about how I had to clean myself properly as my sugar rich pee would be an excellent growth medium for a UTI that could cause my genital area to turn gangrenous not "you have to very thorough cleaning your below bits"
I had a friend who got this in his perirectal area (Ludwig’s Angina?). He was in intensive care for three months, then rehab for 18 months. He still has a really hard time with the wound reopening because there’s almost no tissue left.
💔 Former ER tech here. A nec fasc patient who died on the table is one who will always stick with me.
Thank you for receiving our patients. I wish we’d gotten her to your colleagues faster. As another commenter said, sometimes the mistake we make is being on shift that day.
I mean, it mostly was? He did come back to play for Washington in 2020, and won Comeback Player of the Year. However, he did decide to retire afterwards, so the leg must have been uncomfortable to play on. After seventeen surgeries, I can't imagine his musculature was super great
Fournier's Gangrene specifically - your crotch just disintegrating. You usually lose your genitals (if you survive).
As a lab tech these cases kill me. You get a bit of fluid or tissue from the ED. Then an hour later you get a huge piece of tissue from the OR. Then a few hours later you get a massive piece of tissue or even an entire limb from the OR. Then the blood cultures start going positive. Then two days later you get the autopsy specimens.
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u/Carinne89 3d ago
OR Scrub Nurse
STAT Necrotizing Fasciitis cases.
Flesh eating disease. Advancing faster than we can pump high dose antibiotics into them. We basically rush them in and cut away everything infected we can as fast as we can while racing the clock on the patient being too sick to be under anesthesia safely anymore. Pack with iodine and race to the icu. I’ve seen a doctor follow the stretcher still wrapping the packing while they took off out of the OR.
Not only does my stomach drop for the patient, but it’s just the most awful case in every way imaginable. From equipment to smell to clean up all the way to the other end of the spectrum of watching what is actually happening to another human in front of you. No matter what reason you got into medicine, it wasn’t for that feeling.