My name is Cora and I am a 26 year old mother of three young children from Alberta Canada. I just came upon this site tonight, and I was in tears the whole time. It brought back alot of memories for me. I too had the flesh eating disease. I got it from my C-section. This all happened December 20, 2000. I was admitted to the hospital to have a c-section because my son Tristan was breech, he is my second child, first child is a girl who is now almost 5 and I had her naturally.but because Tristan was breech they did not want me to have a natural birth. The c-section was at 8 am, and I thought all had went well. I had a baby boy who was healthy and born weighing 8 lbs 1.5 ounces. Of course we were all so happy and my daughter, who was 15 months old, was also so excited. The next day I had started to get the chills and cranked up the heat in my room. A nurse came in and told me the nurses cannot work in that heat, so she turned it down, and got me a little blanket. I just ignored the chills, I figured it was nothing. I had a baby, I never knew anything else could go wrong. So on December 22 the doctor released me and my baby from the hospital. I was of course happy to be going home, but I felt so ill.

I was out of the hospital not even five hours when I started to get bad pains that were not near my incision line. They actually felt like they were moving. I also had diarrhea, but there was a bad flu going around, and I figured that is what I had. The baby nurse came to see me, and I told her how I was feeling and she said it was probably the flu, she also noticed a bruise like thing on my abdomen, up away's away from my incision line. She said it must have been just that a simple bruise caused sometimes from surgery. So we left it and never thought much more about it. I was in a lot of pain, and had a high fever the whole night, and the diarrhea had continued, and some vomiting. I could not eat or drink anything and I could barely move. But I did not want to go to the hospital, because I wanted nothing more then to spend Christmas morning with my daughter, son and husband. I just kept getting worse and worse, but I have a high pain tolerance so I just lived with it. Still thinking it was a flu and my recent c-section pains. We went out to my husband's parents place for Christmas dinner on December 24th. I could not eat, and I could not sit at the table, so I excused myself and sat on their couch. It was then they took my temperature and found my fever to be 104 degrees Celsius. I had the chills and felt horrible. They suggested a bath to bring the fever down since Tylenol was doing nothing. My husband helped me into the tub, since I could barely move at this point. When I came out, My husband's step mom, who is a PCA, wanted to look at my incision line. She took a look and instructed us to go right now to the local hospital, not wanting to scare me too much, she said because it might hurt my baby to breastfeed with that high of a fever. We left right away, dropped my kids off with our aunt, and went to the hospital. I thought they would look at me and send me home, but they didn't. They did blood tests and told me I had a blood infection, my potassium levels were low, and my co levels were high, they said they wanted to keep me in and monitor me for the night. I said I wanted to go home, and the doc said if you do you might not live. That scared me, so I decided I had better stay. I just kept getting worse. They could barely get an IV in me since I was shaking so bad. I could not even pick up my baby who they let stay with me so I could feed him. Finally I just asked them to give him a bottle, I could not feed him, I had no energy and I was in so much pain. The next morning my doctor came and and checked me, and said I had a bruise on my abdomen, caused by coughing and hitting my abdomen on the counter, I told him I never did that, but he didn't listen. He just left me there in the hospital bed and said he would come by later that evening. So there I was getting sicker and sicker, and no one was noticing me. We had no reason to be worried, we thought it was a flu. I never new about the flesh eating disease and the risk of surgery. Later that day there was a really bad odor coming from me. The doc said it was from my flow, but a nurse questioned that, and took my pad into a linen closet and actually smelled it, and it was not what was smelling. She then told the doc, who ordered x-rays of my bowels right away. I was so confused. I had a baby, nothing to do with my bowels, so why is he checking them. He did the x-rays and then came into my room and told me I was being sent by ambulance to Edmonton Alberta. When I asked why I was told to have a cat scan, and I will be back tonight. I was so scared, my husband was scared. I thought I was going to die. They loaded me on the stretcher, and let me kiss my babies goodbye. I could only cry while I kissed them. I told them mommy will come home, I promise. My husband held me and cried with me. The ambulance attendants were even crying. Then they said I had to go, my husband could not come with me, because someone had to watch the kids, so my sister came with me in the ambulance. The whole way into the city, this smell kept coming out of my abdomen, and I just kept apologizing for it (like I had any control over it). On the way there, I looked at my sister and I said Chrissy, I know what is wrong with me. She said what, I said I have the flesh eating disease, she said No you don't, don't worry about that. They took me to the wrong hospital to start with, then they finally got me to the right one, and they looked at my x-rays, and then came and got me. We had barely received word that I was having surgery and they were taking me away, I never even got to say bye to my sister, because she was calling my husband to tell him I had to have surgery so find someone to watch the kids and come to the hospital.

The next few days are a bit hazy since I was on a morphine pump, and I swear I never missed pressing the button, every nine minutes. I was in and out, carrying on conversations then falling asleep and waking and picking up where I left off. I was up walking around, very slowly of course the day after my first surgery. I was told I had my abdomen debrided, and had a open wound. Gord, my husband, said he could see my internal organs when he looked inside me. I could not look, if I was going to recover I could not look at my abdomen. The 27th I had to have another surgery to close the fascia. I can't remember much about this either, I just know a day after this surgery I was moved into a public room, before I was in an isolated room. Now I shared a room with another lady, and I was so happy to do that, because that meant I must be getting better. I still had no idea what was wrong with me, and no one was answering my questions.

I had to have my abdomen packed twice daily, which was a very painful experience, and morphine was not helping it. I also had a horrible and very itchy rash all over my body. I found out just recently after the birth of my third child that it is because I am allergic to most antibiotics. I was sent back to our local hospital on Dec 31. I was happy to be back in the same town as my kids, I would get to see them more. I only saw them a few times when I was in the city hospital, and was so out of it, I never got to do much with them. I was put back on bed rest, and given needles all the time to thin my blood. They had to put me on antidepressants because I was so depressed. I had a new little baby and I didn't get to be home with him and be his mother. He was being raised by who ever could take him and my daughter at the time. I also had to quit breastfeeding him after only five days, because I could not breast feed with all the antibiotics. I was however healing. My only goal was to get well enough to come home to be with my kids, and I was determined to do it, after about a week of being in the local hospital with an open wound. I was allowed to go home for days passes. I loved that, but I was also so scared I was going to get sick again, plus it tore me apart to have to leave my kids every night. I finally found out that I had the flesh eating disease, and I was even more scared, because I kept thinking if I got it from my c-section incision line, and I would forusurly get it from this huge wound, but the doctors and nurses assured me I would not. Didn't make me feel much better, by this point I didn't trust doctors all too much.

On January 13, I was allowed to come home and stay home. I had a home care nurse come in once a day for six months. I had to heal from the inside out. I was packed with 28 four by fours soaked in bedadine (which burned my skin). But I recovered quickly, after being out of the hospital a week, I was back to doing everything I did before, I just couldn't lift my kids at all for the next few months. I still don't know why and how I got what I had, apparently the flesh eating disease that I had was made up of different bacteria than the "real" disease, but it was necrotizing fasciitis. I have a really messed up tummy now, no feeling from my belly button down, just above the pubic area and a bit on my left thigh. I have to have plastic surgery done and I go for the appointment in October, but I am really scared of more surgery. I did have another child, which I must say was a very scary experience because I was so afraid to go through all that again, and because I was also told that if I did get pregnant I would have to have an abortion, but even though I was on birth control pills I got pregnant. So it was a very scary pregnancy, I leaked amionic fluid, had gestational diabetes, and had 9 ultrasounds to make sure my uterus didn't burst, because they were not too sure the extent of my internal damages, and because of all the scar tissue they recommended a c-section, which scared me to death. The c-section with my daughter Kylie went well though but I did end up with an infection and of course I freaked out and panicked, but it was just a surface infection, which 8 days in the hospital, and a home care nurse to monitor it for two months healed fine. Thank God, because I could not have lived through the flesh eating disease again. I also got my tubes tied. No more kids for me.

The three weeks I missed with my son I can never get back and it still makes me sad even three and half years later, but I am just so thankful to be here with my babies. They are and were my reason to live. They are what got me through all that, them and my very supportive husband, that has been there through it all, and sees my tummy all the time and doesn't think I am a freak. Even though I think I am. Hopefully, I can get my tummy fixed up, and try to put this all behind me. I really think that women need to be made aware that something like this can happen from a c-section. They are not always routine, like the doctor told me they where. There needs to be more awareness out there regarding the potential risks of surgery, and I just hope more people are spared what I have gone through as the flesh eating disease becomes more known.