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How Flesh-eating Bacteria Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me is always
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Speaker 1: this Charles W. Chuck and Bryant. Uh. He's given me
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Speaker 1: the A O K symbols, So we're all set to go.
0:26
Speaker 1: Let me have a bowlful of dinosaurs in front of us.
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Speaker 1: Pants are off? Pants are off? Mike's are on? Yes,
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Speaker 1: that should be our motto, all of them should be.
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Speaker 1: That's just great on a T shirt. But um, the
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Speaker 1: the all of our open wounds have been treated according
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Speaker 1: to the stuff by step process included in this article. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: did you read that sidebar? It's gruesome. Yeah, And you
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Speaker 1: know what this is like. This kind of thing can
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Speaker 1: strike fear into you when it's in the news, which
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Speaker 1: it has been lately in Georgia and nationwide. But um,
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Speaker 1: it's rare and we can't say that enough true, So
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Speaker 1: don't freak out and don't start slathering yourself with antibacterial
1:08
Speaker 1: gel and um. To the writer's credit, it is pointed
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Speaker 1: out in this article it's like five cases of this
1:15
Speaker 1: a year worldwide, right, I didn't get that either way
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Speaker 1: still even in the US now and like maybe and Dora,
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Speaker 1: that'd be huge yea. Um, but chuck, after researching this
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Speaker 1: plushaming bacteria scares out of you exactly. Yeah, we can't
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Speaker 1: beep any longer. It's sad you just did. Man, you
1:40
Speaker 1: just found a work around said beep. So that's not
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Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, it's it's pretty scary because it's
1:47
Speaker 1: um silent and it can the silent killer, it can
1:52
Speaker 1: creep up on you. And in the case of Amy Copelan,
1:56
Speaker 1: who will get too sadly like she was going to
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Speaker 1: the hospital for three days before they diagnosed it and
2:02
Speaker 1: by that time it was too late, too too late,
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Speaker 1: because she survived obviously. But yeah, people, I was reading
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Speaker 1: an article about her and she's just like tough as nails.
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Speaker 1: They said, like, we're gonna have to amputate your leg,
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Speaker 1: and she said, like, let's do this. That's what she said.
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Speaker 1: She couldn't even talk. She mouthed it far braver than me.
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Speaker 1: I would have been, like, let's end this, right example,
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Speaker 1: she wouldn't plug me right. Yeah, I heard now that
2:28
Speaker 1: she's up in about the first thing she did was
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Speaker 1: take like a half gallon shot of Scotch and punch
2:32
Speaker 1: out at doctor just for fun. Alright, so we'll get
2:36
Speaker 1: to her tragic but inspiring story, okay, um, I was
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Speaker 1: going to use her as an intro. Go ahead, then,
2:43
Speaker 1: all right, so I get to it right now, Amy Copeland.
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Speaker 1: She's Um twenty four. She's a Georgia lady, um, and
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Speaker 1: she was on a zip line at a friend's house
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Speaker 1: and fell off. I don't know if the zip line
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Speaker 1: broke or if she like go or whatever, but it
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Speaker 1: was it was a malfunction. It wasn't. It was over
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Speaker 1: like a raveni creak over some brackish water. And in
3:03
Speaker 1: brackish water, actually in all fresh water, there is a
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Speaker 1: bacteria called aromonous hydrophilia or a hydrophilia, and it's everywhere. Normally,
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Speaker 1: if you ingest a little bit of this, you it's
3:17
Speaker 1: through swallow water and it gives you the poops. That's it.
3:23
Speaker 1: The reason why just diarrhea is because you have whole
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Speaker 1: colonies of bacteria and antibodies in your stomach that are
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Speaker 1: designed specifically to take on a hydrophilia and put smack
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Speaker 1: down on it. It's part of your immune system, right, thankfully.
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Speaker 1: The thing is with Amy Copeland, she had a gash
3:41
Speaker 1: in her leg from when she fell and the bacteria
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Speaker 1: got in that way, and that is a whole different
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Speaker 1: host of problems. Exactly. Your body is not used to
3:51
Speaker 1: fending off bacteria through wounds, and there are certain types
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Speaker 1: of bacteria which are generally known as flesh eating bacteria
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Speaker 1: that basically mounts the largest, most vicious, virulent campaign of
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Speaker 1: any bacteria around in your human body. This is what
4:09
Speaker 1: I didn't quite get though, because you did this part
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Speaker 1: as additional research, which I appreciate, but I'm not quite sure.
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Speaker 1: Is it a dummy attack is going on? You want
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Speaker 1: to get into this? This is how flush eating bacteria.
4:22
Speaker 1: I mean, we might as well go ahead and tackle
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Speaker 1: this and then we'll finish up Amy story then get
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Speaker 1: into it. Okay, So um, what happens? What happens? This
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Speaker 1: the bacteria which is again a a hydrophilia. It's everywhere
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Speaker 1: and where our bodies are used to it strep the
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Speaker 1: same group a strep. Yeah, that's what gives a strep throat.
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Speaker 1: It's everywhere of people are carriers, right, These things are
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Speaker 1: everywhere and normally when they get into our body through
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Speaker 1: normal channels. Our body knows how to ward it off.
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Speaker 1: When they come in through a wound, you have potentially
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Speaker 1: big trouble. Um and these bacteria are capable of producing
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Speaker 1: um toxins. There's entero toxins, which are cytotoxins, meaning like
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Speaker 1: they directly go and like kill cells, they like weaken
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Speaker 1: the membrane or something like that. So um they can
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Speaker 1: go and attack tissues. And then another thing that they
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Speaker 1: might express genetically is um exotoxins. Right, these are the
5:25
Speaker 1: ones where if you if you have a bacteria that
5:28
Speaker 1: expresses exotoxins, No that I thought that prompts the immune response.
5:35
Speaker 1: It does. The problem is that these bacteria are are
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Speaker 1: prompts are setting off almost it seems like purposefully an
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Speaker 1: immune response from your T cells, but it's too big
5:47
Speaker 1: and this huge response comes about and it's like this big, lumbering,
5:51
Speaker 1: clumsy response from your T cells. So your T cells
5:54
Speaker 1: are going haywire because this basically dummy attack has been
5:58
Speaker 1: launched by this bacteria to this rack the T cells.
6:01
Speaker 1: So this is what I don't get. Are they are
6:02
Speaker 1: the T cells attacking the wrong thing. The T cells
6:05
Speaker 1: aren't attacking anything. The T cells going on high alert signal,
6:10
Speaker 1: the production of cytokines, which are like signals. They're like
6:14
Speaker 1: triggers like histamines are. They're an immune response trigger. Cytokines
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Speaker 1: are the cytokines In turn, UM overproduced or over excite
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Speaker 1: macrophages and those things go and like eat cell detritus
6:28
Speaker 1: or detritus. Actually listen to the pronunciation actually detritus okay,
6:33
Speaker 1: so eats cell detritus. So they're going, hey wire and
6:37
Speaker 1: then um, last, but not least, they promote the release
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Speaker 1: of free radicals, which normally go and target bacteria. But
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Speaker 1: in this huge undirected immune response, bacteria has purposefully triggered UM.
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Speaker 1: The free radicals are attacking all this tissue. So you
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Speaker 1: have cytotoxic um in taro talk sense that the bacteria
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Speaker 1: is producing directly, and then it's also indirectly affecting this
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Speaker 1: healthy tissue by promoting the release of free radicals. It
7:08
Speaker 1: does seem purposeful. It very much like it sits around
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Speaker 1: and reads the art of war and decides, this is
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Speaker 1: how I'm going to take you down exactly, and it
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Speaker 1: works like a charm. So you have your tissue that's
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Speaker 1: being destroyed, right yeah, which is where you get the
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Speaker 1: term necrotizing faciitis, which is the correct term for um
7:28
Speaker 1: flash eating bacteria. That's right, and um you it also
7:32
Speaker 1: promotes something called toxic shock syndrome. Is that when your
7:36
Speaker 1: organs starts shutting down. That's part of it. Wow, yeah,
7:39
Speaker 1: all right, well that makes sense. And that's scary. And
7:42
Speaker 1: the scariest part of all this is that it starts
7:45
Speaker 1: out by something really tiny, like it can be a
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Speaker 1: pin prick of an open wound. It doesn't have to
7:50
Speaker 1: be some big gash on your leg. And it starts
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Speaker 1: out of something small and turns into something big, which
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Speaker 1: is really scary. And you know, if you if you
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Speaker 1: have a cut on your hand, on your leg, and
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Speaker 1: you actually if even if you haven't been in any
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Speaker 1: kind of brackish water, if you just if it starts
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Speaker 1: to hurt a lot worse than you think it should,
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Speaker 1: then it's probably not one of the five cases, but
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Speaker 1: you should probably start looking into it. Well, what was
8:15
Speaker 1: surprising to me was it doesn't even have to be
8:17
Speaker 1: a cut, man, it could be an abrasion, a bruise.
8:19
Speaker 1: How could a bruise I don't get that. I I
8:21
Speaker 1: don't know if your skin is thinned out at that
8:24
Speaker 1: site really like so thin it and just get through
8:27
Speaker 1: the outer dermots maybe, um, but yeah you can, And
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Speaker 1: it doesn't just have to be like you said, brackish water.
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Speaker 1: Like if you have a cut an open wound on
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Speaker 1: your finger and you're around somebody with strep throat, yeah,
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Speaker 1: you could conceivably. All the stuff is in place for
8:45
Speaker 1: you to to contract necrotizing fasciitists and it can go
8:49
Speaker 1: person to person for sure, but without an open wound,
8:53
Speaker 1: it's pretty unlikely, right, Like that's how they get in. Yeah,
8:58
Speaker 1: and they eat the fat that the tissue, and then
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Speaker 1: they start to consume your organs. Right, And the reason
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Speaker 1: the flesh eating bacteria is clinically the clinical term is
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Speaker 1: necrotizing fasciitists, which means the killing of fascia. Fascia is
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Speaker 1: like this membrane that access connecting tissue between your skin
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Speaker 1: and fatty layer and your muscles and joints and tendons
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Speaker 1: and ligaments and bones and organs, and it's this uninterrupted
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Speaker 1: membrane that covers your entire body beneath your skin. It's like, um,
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Speaker 1: one of those what are they called, the one guy
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Speaker 1: sent it to us. We have a green screen one.
9:41
Speaker 1: Oh the root suit, Yeah, the body suit. It's like
9:44
Speaker 1: a root suit, but it's been between your skin and
9:47
Speaker 1: your muscles. This is where this infection takes place. And
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Speaker 1: since it's uninterrupted, it can go everywhere. It's just basically
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Speaker 1: chugs along and separates your skin from your muscles by
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Speaker 1: killing all the tissue around it. Well, and the other
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Speaker 1: scary part is it's really really really fast. Like this
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Speaker 1: football player from the University of Tulsa died in a week. Uh.
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Speaker 1: Big healthy tight end, you know, like you don't have
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Speaker 1: to be weak, and you don't have to be old
10:16
Speaker 1: or a child like you can attack anyone that gets
10:19
Speaker 1: it and take you out pretty quickly. Yeah. Uh and
10:22
Speaker 1: and just a matter of days, like you said, he
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Speaker 1: can go from a pin prick to you know, you
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Speaker 1: just lost your leg. Yeah, well, which is what happened
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Speaker 1: with Amy Copeland. I mean, it's a miracle that she's
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Speaker 1: alive right now, but she ended up having her left
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Speaker 1: leg completely amputated, her right foot, both of her hands,
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Speaker 1: and part of her torso. And she got out of
10:45
Speaker 1: the hospital and like I mean, it took a while,
10:48
Speaker 1: but then I think two or three days later she
10:50
Speaker 1: was already had taught herself about to eat. This company
10:53
Speaker 1: has thrown in to build like a thirty addition to
10:57
Speaker 1: our home for like rehabilitation stuff, and uh yeah, it's
11:02
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Like her, her spirit, her dad has been
11:06
Speaker 1: um posting like crazy on like Facebook and on her
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Speaker 1: website they started. And she's a bad man, majamma, way
11:12
Speaker 1: better than me. She's tough, very inspiring. Um, so wouldn't
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Speaker 1: let's say if it's also crazy, Chuck, It's not just her.
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Speaker 1: There was another dude from Cartersville, Georgia, who had another
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Speaker 1: necrotizing fasciitis case, and they were actually in the rooms
11:31
Speaker 1: next to one another at one while there at I
11:33
Speaker 1: think a burn center in Augusta. Was it because this
11:36
Speaker 1: place is like one of the one of the few
11:38
Speaker 1: places in Georgia that like knows what they're doing with
11:40
Speaker 1: necrotizing fasciitists. Um, and so you know, how do you
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Speaker 1: treat this thing? Well, the first thing you do once
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Speaker 1: it's diagnosed is like huge, huge, heavy doses of antibiotics
11:53
Speaker 1: to obviously to try and kill it. But like we're
11:55
Speaker 1: not talking like Papa pill every six hours, no, like
11:59
Speaker 1: cons then tripped just basically flooding your body with it
12:02
Speaker 1: um and immunoglobin globe and immunoglobe, and Jerry thought that
12:08
Speaker 1: was funny. Yeah, I heard. Uh. So they want to
12:12
Speaker 1: remove like any of the dying flesh and try and
12:15
Speaker 1: try and isolate it and remove the bad parts, which
12:18
Speaker 1: is what they were doing with her, and it just
12:20
Speaker 1: spread so quickly. You know, they were like fighting a
12:22
Speaker 1: really uphill battle in her case. I read a case study.
12:26
Speaker 1: Have you seen any pictures of this stuff? Um? No,
12:30
Speaker 1: m hm. So I wrote a case study of this
12:34
Speaker 1: woman who came in and she had it in her
12:36
Speaker 1: arm and um, you could just first of all, her
12:39
Speaker 1: arms swollen. It was like cabbage patch kid's army. But
12:44
Speaker 1: then there's like splotches of like purple splotches of black,
12:49
Speaker 1: and then um, what's called desquamation, where like the top
12:53
Speaker 1: layer of skin is just peeling off. And all of
12:56
Speaker 1: this had happened to her like over the course of
12:58
Speaker 1: hours and as they were treating it. One of the
13:01
Speaker 1: things that they'll do before amputation is called the bride
13:04
Speaker 1: mint where basically they take the the limb that's infected
13:09
Speaker 1: or the area that's infected and they just scrape the tissue.
13:14
Speaker 1: I read about that, Um, I saw a picture of it.
13:16
Speaker 1: It's horrific. Yeah, I didn't look at the pictures. Um.
13:19
Speaker 1: And then after that they have to treat it with
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Speaker 1: skin grafts, after after it's been after they got all
13:24
Speaker 1: of it, hopefully, if they that's what she did on
13:26
Speaker 1: her torso yeah, okay. And if they can't get it,
13:29
Speaker 1: then they amputate. Yeah, it's a pretty serious condition. Okay.
13:36
Speaker 1: So what the lookout for. We said, if you have
13:38
Speaker 1: like a a smallish wound that's like disproportionately painful, you
13:43
Speaker 1: should go on high alert. If it becomes like swollen
13:46
Speaker 1: and red and hot, that's a really bad sign. If
13:50
Speaker 1: you get typical things you might associate with bacteria and
13:54
Speaker 1: back to your own infection, like diarrhea and fever and chills,
13:58
Speaker 1: nausea and vomiting, that's a really bad time too, especially
14:02
Speaker 1: if you have just a small cut on your arm,
14:03
Speaker 1: So that nausea, vomiting, all that stuff could be the
14:06
Speaker 1: result of UM, the infection. It could also be the
14:09
Speaker 1: infection leading to toxic shock syndrome, which in and of
14:13
Speaker 1: itself is pretty interesting. Apparently we've only known about that
14:16
Speaker 1: since nineteen Yeah, Um, do you remember like associating it
14:20
Speaker 1: with tampons. No. Well, when it first came out, like
14:24
Speaker 1: almost all the case studies of this toxic shock syndrome,
14:28
Speaker 1: which is like basically your organ multi organ failure, which
14:31
Speaker 1: is three or more UM, lowered blood pressure, all this
14:36
Speaker 1: other stuff. Um, all of the cases were of people
14:41
Speaker 1: who are using like high absorbency tampons. They were women.
14:44
Speaker 1: Then they started to look more and more and they
14:46
Speaker 1: realized that that didn't hold true when you looked at
14:49
Speaker 1: more of the case studies are a lot of men
14:51
Speaker 1: and everything. And now they realize that it's the result
14:54
Speaker 1: of an infection. So like the lower blood pressure is
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Speaker 1: like your body mounting this huge immune to ends and um,
15:01
Speaker 1: so histamines are released, so your blood vessels dilate, so
15:04
Speaker 1: your blood pressure decreases to a really dangerous level. It's
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Speaker 1: basically your body having this enormous allergic reaction to an infection.
15:14
Speaker 1: And it had nothing to do with tampons. No, it did.
15:17
Speaker 1: It still did, but they thought it was just tampons
15:20
Speaker 1: that triggered toxic shock. Yeah. Even still there's like warnings
15:23
Speaker 1: on boxes. I think that like toxic shock syndrome warning. Jeez,
15:28
Speaker 1: that's pretty scary. I had older sisters. I did too,
15:31
Speaker 1: but I didn't get in her business. UM. So in
15:35
Speaker 1: the first twenty four hours, you know you're gonna feel
15:37
Speaker 1: these pains. UM the second I'm sorry, three to four
15:42
Speaker 1: days in, UM, there's gonna be some swelling, and that's
15:46
Speaker 1: when you might get this purply rash or like blisters
15:51
Speaker 1: that are filled with a dark fluid. That's not a
15:53
Speaker 1: good sign at all. And UM, your skin even at
15:56
Speaker 1: that point, even three to four days in might start
15:58
Speaker 1: to flake off and turn white or dark, and that
16:03
Speaker 1: is definitely a bad sign. That's the disquamation. UM. Then
16:07
Speaker 1: four to five days in, that's when the toxic shock happens.
16:10
Speaker 1: And you're pretty lucky if you haven't been treated at
16:13
Speaker 1: this point to to make it out alive. All right,
16:15
Speaker 1: toxic shock alone of cases are fatal with UM flesh
16:20
Speaker 1: eating bacteria. Overall, the thirty to forty I saw is
16:24
Speaker 1: the lowest of cases. So should we talk about wound care? Sure,
16:31
Speaker 1: I've never cleaned a wound like this, Well, then you
16:35
Speaker 1: haven't been cleaning your wounds correctly. This is one of
16:37
Speaker 1: the ways to prevent flesh eating bacteria. That's right. You
16:40
Speaker 1: want to flesh your wound with cold water initially, no soap,
16:44
Speaker 1: and in fact, you don't even want to get soap
16:45
Speaker 1: into the wound. Apparently you want to clean around it
16:49
Speaker 1: with with soap and the cloth and then get some
16:53
Speaker 1: alcohol and put it on your tweezers. Use the tweezers
16:56
Speaker 1: to clean out any gunk that's in there in the
17:00
Speaker 1: woon site. Yeah, I've never stuck tweezers in one of
17:04
Speaker 1: my cuts ever. Well, that means you didn't have anything
17:07
Speaker 1: in there, or you didn't you didn't know it. No,
17:10
Speaker 1: I didn't. I was like, I'm not putting tweezers in there. Uh.
17:14
Speaker 1: Then you want to apply a bandage if it's a
17:17
Speaker 1: place that can be exposed to dirt. And they say
17:19
Speaker 1: to ask a doctor whether or not to bandage, because
17:23
Speaker 1: sometimes wounds are better unbandaged and heal quicker. Sometimes they're
17:26
Speaker 1: better bandaged. And then the old antibodyquintment we'll always do
17:31
Speaker 1: you right, don't forget that. Well, yeah, I almost always
17:35
Speaker 1: put a band aid on. I've never had a wound
17:38
Speaker 1: where I'm like, well, I probably shouldn't put a band aid.
17:39
Speaker 1: Symbolic band aid. Um, what else you got? I've got
17:45
Speaker 1: some other stuff like risk factors, Um, you can be
17:49
Speaker 1: totally healthy. Just from the badness of Amy Copeland, I
17:54
Speaker 1: assume she's probably a healthy person. Yeah. I think a
17:58
Speaker 1: lot of people typically are healthy. UM. So you can
18:01
Speaker 1: still come down with flashing in bacteria necrotizing fascitists as
18:04
Speaker 1: a healthy person. Um. But there are some risk factors
18:08
Speaker 1: that that would put you in the higher likelihood camp. Um.
18:13
Speaker 1: If you've had an infection recently, especially with a rash
18:17
Speaker 1: like chicken pox. That's one. Cuts, abrasions, those are big ones. UM.
18:23
Speaker 1: Steroid use. You don't want to be using steroids anyway,
18:27
Speaker 1: but even if they were prescribed and you have a cut,
18:31
Speaker 1: I think steroid um steroids prevent cuts from healing is fast.
18:37
Speaker 1: So I think those two combined make you at a
18:39
Speaker 1: higher risk if your immune system is lower. Sure you've
18:44
Speaker 1: been sick, yeah, Uh, diabetes is a big one. Yeah. Yeah.
18:51
Speaker 1: And then if you are a black tar heroine user.
18:55
Speaker 1: There have been outbreaks of um necrotizing fascitists among heroin
18:59
Speaker 1: user before. There was one in the late nineties in
19:02
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and black tar in particular, Uh, set you
19:06
Speaker 1: up for it because it's like this lower purity heroine
19:09
Speaker 1: that's gummy, it's gummi er than regular heroin, so it
19:13
Speaker 1: collapses your veins like almost immediately. So people who shoot
19:17
Speaker 1: black tar heroin do what's called skin popping, where they
19:19
Speaker 1: shoot it just under the skin or into their muscles um.
19:23
Speaker 1: And then because it's not the least bit refined, that's
19:26
Speaker 1: why it's gummy um. There's often impurities, and sometimes some
19:30
Speaker 1: of those impurities are Claustralia, which is a kind of
19:32
Speaker 1: bacteria that can be a flesh eating bacteria. So basically,
19:37
Speaker 1: if you're shooting black tar heroin, you're running the risk
19:39
Speaker 1: of directly injecting flesh eating bacteria. And there's people who
19:43
Speaker 1: have lost arms, shoulders, ribs two flesh eating bacteria by
19:48
Speaker 1: shooting black tar heroin. I think the stuff you should
19:50
Speaker 1: know advice is to not do heroin. Let's just go
19:53
Speaker 1: ahead and just throw that out there. I could get
19:56
Speaker 1: behind that. You're avoiding a whole host of problems if
19:59
Speaker 1: you don't do heroin the age. So what else can
20:03
Speaker 1: you do to prevent it? We'll keep the wounds clean,
20:06
Speaker 1: wash your hands a lot, and that means warm water
20:09
Speaker 1: and soap and like fifteen to twenty seconds of good scrubbing,
20:13
Speaker 1: like you're going into surgery, get between the fingers, dry
20:16
Speaker 1: it off really well. And then after you dry it off,
20:19
Speaker 1: don't go and put your hand back on the faucet
20:22
Speaker 1: to turn it off in a public bathroom or even
20:24
Speaker 1: your own bathroom, although I don't know if I would
20:28
Speaker 1: do that in my own home. No, I think your
20:31
Speaker 1: own homes, Okay. I feel like there should be some
20:34
Speaker 1: sort of I mean, it could lead to a resident superbugs,
20:38
Speaker 1: but we already faced tho, so what do we have
20:41
Speaker 1: to loose? But I feel like there should be more
20:43
Speaker 1: um cleaning products handy in like public bathrooms. Well there
20:50
Speaker 1: are increasingly you see those little hand sanitizer machines. I mean,
20:53
Speaker 1: like here's a bottle of like bleach water and just
20:56
Speaker 1: go ahead and spray that toilet seat or well. I'm
20:59
Speaker 1: not like a Hour Hughes type, but I definitely after
21:02
Speaker 1: I wash my hands in the bathroom in public, like,
21:05
Speaker 1: I don't put my hand on the door handle or
21:08
Speaker 1: anything like that. Always try and muscle my way out
21:10
Speaker 1: or put a paper twel between me and the thing.
21:13
Speaker 1: I'm extremely conscious of that too, especially at the gym. Yeah,
21:15
Speaker 1: I've been more conscious about it, which pops up with
21:18
Speaker 1: your character in an episode in our TV show that's
21:21
Speaker 1: coming out. That's right, a little uh teaser, Yeah, big
21:26
Speaker 1: teaser right there. That's true. You got anything else? Uh? No?
21:31
Speaker 1: I mean Amy Copeland's story has been prominent lately obviously,
21:34
Speaker 1: and they are accepting donations, and I think we would
21:37
Speaker 1: be remiss if we didn't announce that. Um, she spells
21:41
Speaker 1: her name a I M E. So it's a I
21:44
Speaker 1: M E E c O p E l A n
21:47
Speaker 1: d dot com slash donations and just go to the
21:51
Speaker 1: website anyway, and just her stories on there and her
21:53
Speaker 1: progress is on there, and it's uh both frightening and
21:57
Speaker 1: inspiring in her case. So uh, it's definitely I think
22:02
Speaker 1: that triggered our desire to do this, right or did
22:06
Speaker 1: it well? Yeah, I mean just that. Not only that,
22:08
Speaker 1: but it seemed that, uh, nobody really had a good
22:12
Speaker 1: idea of um, what flesh eating bacteria does. Loudly local
22:19
Speaker 1: news reports yeah, and I mean not even local, like
22:22
Speaker 1: the national stuff too, is like, you know, um, really misinformed.
22:28
Speaker 1: Like they're like each through your tissue. It doesn't eat
22:31
Speaker 1: through your tissue. No nobody dug into how it really works.
22:34
Speaker 1: It's very frustrating, you know why, because it's way easier
22:37
Speaker 1: just to scare people with things with non facts, right,
22:41
Speaker 1: But this is one of the ones where it was
22:43
Speaker 1: like the more I looked into it, the more scared
22:45
Speaker 1: I became. Even people are lazy. Um oh, I got
22:49
Speaker 1: a little more alright at more so Like. It wasn't
22:52
Speaker 1: until nine two that somebody used the term neckartizing fasciitists
22:56
Speaker 1: and we really started to understand that it was bacteria
23:00
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um. But the we knew about it since
23:05
Speaker 1: the Civil War. Wow, that's crazy what they call it
23:07
Speaker 1: though in the Civil War. Uh well, they used to
23:10
Speaker 1: name it, according to the doctor who reported it um
23:15
Speaker 1: so like. And it was also based on the area
23:18
Speaker 1: of the body that was infected. So like if you
23:21
Speaker 1: had furniers or Fournier's gang green, it meant that you
23:25
Speaker 1: had flesh eating bacteria around your genitals. If you had ludwigs,
23:32
Speaker 1: um angina meant your head, flesh eating bacteria around your
23:35
Speaker 1: face or mouth or jaw. Yeah. And then they figured
23:39
Speaker 1: out like, oh wait, we should classify by the kind
23:41
Speaker 1: of bacteria and that these are not separate things like
23:44
Speaker 1: this is all the same thing. These people have had
23:45
Speaker 1: like a cut around there that this got into boy,
23:48
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble back then too. If you're in
23:51
Speaker 1: big trouble now, imagine back then pretty scary. Well. The
23:55
Speaker 1: first guy to described as a Confederate Civil War surgeon
23:59
Speaker 1: named Joseph Joe, and I'm sure he was like, I
24:01
Speaker 1: can't do anything for you, man, right, he retired to
24:04
Speaker 1: the country. So that's it. Flesh eating bacteria. UM. If
24:10
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about it, you can type
24:12
Speaker 1: that in flesh hyphen eating bacteria uh into the search
24:17
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff works dot com and that will
24:20
Speaker 1: bring up listener mail. I am going to call this uh.
24:28
Speaker 1: We love the Irish as always, Uh, Josh and Chuck
24:32
Speaker 1: and Jerry. Just a short note from an old geezer
24:35
Speaker 1: UH living in Limerick in Ireland, who is one of
24:39
Speaker 1: your most devoted bands for the last number of years.
24:41
Speaker 1: When walking my dogs every Sunday on the mountains of
24:44
Speaker 1: Oreland and alpine areas, occasionally I'm listening to stuff you
24:48
Speaker 1: should know in the iPod. My biggest problem is that
24:51
Speaker 1: I've not been able to source a set of earphones
24:53
Speaker 1: that will suit my border collies, who was cool, intelligent
24:57
Speaker 1: piece would easily tune into you. Laid back Southern dudes,
25:00
Speaker 1: so he wants his dogs to listen. That's nice. I
25:03
Speaker 1: thoroughly enjoyed the show, in particular You're Easy symbiotic style,
25:07
Speaker 1: and I've recommended it wildly. In particular, I enjoyed the
25:10
Speaker 1: shrunken head show because I used to have one. How
25:14
Speaker 1: you might ask, My sister worked in Columbia in the
25:18
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and brought me home a present of
25:20
Speaker 1: a shrunken head. It looked very real, so the first
25:22
Speaker 1: question I asked was is it real? No, it's not,
25:26
Speaker 1: she said, but added, if you really want a genuine head,
25:28
Speaker 1: I'll bring one next time. Needless to say, I decline,
25:32
Speaker 1: which was a big mistaken. The original head is still
25:35
Speaker 1: hanging behind the bar of a pub on the west
25:37
Speaker 1: coast of uh CEO dot Claire. Is that county County Claire?
25:43
Speaker 1: All right, that's what they do in Ireland, CEO and
25:47
Speaker 1: that is from Mike keys uh. And then Judy and
25:50
Speaker 1: Glenn are the dogs. He named his dogs Judy and
25:54
Speaker 1: Glenn ver I know. And he's just marching around Ireland.
25:59
Speaker 1: Let's and THENTO us also with the shrunken head around
26:02
Speaker 1: his neck. I guess we'll keep marching Glenn and Judy
26:05
Speaker 1: and Mike is the human Mike human. Thank you very
26:09
Speaker 1: much for writing in on behalf of all three of you.
26:11
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Um, so this one was a unior request.
26:16
Speaker 1: If you have a request, we want to hear it.
26:18
Speaker 1: We're always looking for good topic suggestions. UM. You can
26:22
Speaker 1: tweet to us s y s K podcast topical request
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26:36
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com for
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