Hi, I was doing some research and happened upon this site and was amazed as I read each persons story. They all had bits and pieces of our story. My husband Bill was at a meeting in Missouri City, Texas on April the 29th when something felt weird on his forearm. He stood up from a cloth sofa and went to the restroom to look at his arm. It had a tiny spot that hurt. There was no skin opening at all. That was mid morning and by a little after noon, it was hurting really bad and was a small spot like a bump or bruise. He called me and told me he was miserable and I instructed him to stop at the emergency room on the way home. He stopped at the C. S. Med, and the doctor told him it did not look like a spider bite, gave him antibiotics and sent him away. He bought ice for the way home to put his arm on. Within 2 hours of onset, he was having fever and chills and a lot of pain. The redness was spreading and the bruise look seemed to grow as well.

For the next two days, he lay in bed on ice and was very sick. I finally starting researching staff infections and was really scared and when his fever went to 101, I took him back to the Med. This time they kept him for 12 days. He lost 3 pints of blood from hemolosis in one day and during that time had 5 surgeries in an 8 day period cutting away subcutaneous tissue. The day we were put in I went to talk to a surgeon to ask him to come look. He came over and did his first surgery that night. Bills arm did not bleed when he opened him up. They did take blood cultures but because he had been on antibiotics for two days, nothing would grow, so identifying the bacteria was impossible by then. He was on some of the most potent antibiotics from that point on. An emergency room should always be on the safe side and take blood. I wish they had. In the beginning Bill had developed a horrible rash that took over his whole body which made him miserable. The doctor blamed it on the original antibiotics but later came to think it was a strep infection with toxic shock syndrome which is the bacteria getting into the blood stream. His organs were being affected in negative ways. It was a very scary time and the minimum could have been an arm loss. The wound vac went home with us but was not healing as quickly as it should have so it was removed for skin grafts with the skin from his thigh, very painful but worked. Lots of therapy since and now his tennis elbow has come back with a vengeance. Months leading up to this he had been on prednisone and had two injections in that arm. Now we know that all of that will lower your immune system. We are now scared of injections and are looking at surgery on the elbow. It has been a weird year and I am thankful to the Lord for all of the blessings He has given us and shown us though all of this. I have cut out a lot of details but I hope our story will help someone.

Please note: The following linked images are very graphic and may be upsetting.

Additional Images of Bill's Experience