Saltwater flesh eating bacteria

[bug]

I read the article in this month's DAN about flesh eating bacteria. I feel that I am VERY lucky. At the beginning of this summer I was on a dive boat in the Caribbean for a month. about 3 weeks in I was on the deck of the boat, just got up from a dive and I was still in my gear. I slipped and railed my shin on the metal tracking that holds the trampoline (the boat was a catamaran). Through my 3mm suit I busted my leg open.

I got out of my gear an cleaned 3" gash on my left shin. Wasn't deep, just kinda wide and long. Over the next week I continued to dive as normal and just cleaned and bandaged the wound a few times a day.

A few days after I got back from my trip I felt like I had the flu (chills, cold sweat, fever, etc). It was very swollen, oozing, etc. I went to the doc the next day. He took a culture and put me on 400mg dicloxacillin. He called me back a day later to tell me I had staphylococcus. Ok well so about a week on antibiotics. After about 2 weeks and going to the doc every 2 days for check ups and blood tests. Another culture pointed out I had another infection but the staph was gone. Now I am on cipro for about a week or so.

about 2 months later the wound is still there and scabbed over and of course a lot smaller. Until about 2 weeks ago it would still swell by the end of a day. So now I just have to be careful not to open it back up.

After reading that article I feel that I am pretty lucky that I didn't get anything worse.

 

[medic_diver45]

Actually if you figure how many people dive and how many of those actually become ill from it, you statistically have very little chance of picking up this bug. Here's the CDC website on this bacterium:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/vibriovulnificus_g.htm

 

[Patch]

Shark deaths average 5 a year, and I doubt many of them are divers. Little risk.

Falling coconuts are much more dangerous!

Just my weird sense of humor ...

No self respecting shark would come near me ...

Our instructor did tell us the coconut statistic.

Firery bowling accident will be my undoing.

John

 

[padrediver]

HEY...THANKS EVERBODY FOR RESPONDING!


At first I wasn't going to make that thread, figured I'd just let it slide....but then I wouldn't have learned that DAN had an alert out about it...I missed that one.

I thought the new spandex skins for surfers/divers were a hoot. I don't anymore!

THANKS AGAIN!
.

 

[padrediver]

I read the article in this month's DAN about flesh eating bacteria. I feel that I am VERY lucky. At the beginning of this summer I was on a dive boat in the Caribbean for a month. about 3 weeks in I was on the deck of the boat, just got up from a dive and I was still in my gear. I slipped and railed my shin on the metal tracking that holds the trampoline (the boat was a catamaran). Through my 3mm suit I busted my leg open.

I got out of my gear an cleaned 3" gash on my left shin. Wasn't deep, just kinda wide and long. Over the next week I continued to dive as normal and just cleaned and bandaged the wound a few times a day.

A few days after I got back from my trip I felt like I had the flu (chills, cold sweat, fever, etc). It was very swollen, oozing, etc. I went to the doc the next day. He took a culture and put me on 400mg dicloxacillin. He called me back a day later to tell me I had staphylococcus. Ok well so about a week on antibiotics. After about 2 weeks and going to the doc every 2 days for check ups and blood tests. Another culture pointed out I had another infection but the staph was gone. Now I am on cipro for about a week or so.

about 2 months later the wound is still there and scabbed over and of course a lot smaller. Until about 2 weeks ago it would still swell by the end of a day. So now I just have to be careful not to open it back up.

After reading that article I feel that I am pretty lucky that I didn't get anything worse.

I can truly appreciate your predicament! Hope you heal soon!

All the stuff my parents said would get me in the water never happened. At Seacamp on Big Pine Key. Fla. back in the sixties a buddy and I decided to snorkle explore a little reef just offshore of the dining hut after dinner. A few minutes later we came limping ashore, fins in hand, almost crying from searing pain and covered with red blotches. We had inadvertently disturbed a small cluster of CASSIOPEA sea
anenomes on a coral head. I guess one of our fins must have brushed one of them. These things look like a sea broccoli and
if you blink you'll miss them. They warn about these in dive courses now, but didn't then as there were far fewer divers
and far fewer incidents and we just used to report the event at our local dive club meetings. Live and learn! I'm not
preaching here nor am I a fundamentalist but:

God is my other dive buddy!

According to the National Geographic channel, jellyfish kill more people than any other "animal", including snakes.

 

[fgray1]

This must be why I always wear a 3 mm suit and a hood. I get weird looks in the Bahamas but I never have to worry about jellyfich and iy cuts down the chanes even more of getting this crap.
Fred

 

[Skip Parker]

Falling coconuts are much more dangerous!

So does that mean you wear helmets on the beach?

 

[DandyDon]

So does that mean you wear helmets on the beach?

If you ever dive the Blue Hole in Belize and have lunch on Lighthouse Atoll, you'll want to take the trail to the Booby Bird observation post, but - watch out for ripe coconuts. You'll see depressions in the ground next to some, and think: "Glad I wasn't there, then!" Resorts usually cut them down before they fall.

Coconuts, Flesh Eating Bacteria, Car Wrecks - all rare, but watch out for the heavy fruit, wear long suits diving, and wear you seat belts driving.

Sharks? Almost non-existant threat, partly because the fish are almsot non-existant. Do suggest you not to an imitation of a slow, clumsy seal in Great White waters, though, the way the last two swimmers bought it.

 

[H2Andy]

what if you are driving down a road, a car swerves into your lane, crashes into you,
and sends you careening into a coconut tree. you stagger out of the car, at which
point a coconut loosened by the collision falls on your head, and which point
you stagger over a cliff and land on the sea, where a shark bites your leg off.
you are rescued, but flesh-eating bacteria have infected the wound, and they
have to amputate everything below your belly-button to save your life!

wouldnt' that just suck?