Kelly Bloomberg

NEW ORLEANS —Health officials are offering a word of caution about flesh-eating bacteria for those planning to head to the water this summer. It is often found in warm, salty brackish waters and in shellfish during the summer months.

Kelly Kohen Blomberg recently came into contact with this rare, but serious disease.

“It is affecting my life. I can’t work right now. I can’t do anything productive right now,” Blomberg said.

She contracted the bacteria when she was beach surf fishing on May 12 in the Gulf of Mexico near Grand Isle, La.

“Whenever I shuffled my foot, it went directly into the mouth of something,” she said. “Blood everywhere, and it was not stopping.”

She cleaned the wound and went to the hospital the next day and started taking antibiotics.

“A week later, my foot was still huge and I’m starting to have, like, dead tissue around my foot so I’m just worried,” she said.

What started as two small scratches became a deep, wide wound on her foot. She was taken to the hospital and has undergone surgery to remove the dead tissue and get a skin graft.

Dr. Obinna Nnedu, her infectious disease doctor at Ochsner Medical Center, said Blomberg contracted vibrio vulnificus, or flesh-eating bacteria.

“If you have an open wound and you go into the salt water off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf, you can be exposed to this bacteria. The other way is by eating raw oysters,” Nnedu said.

He said the spread of the bacteria happens within four to six hours and includes redness, swelling and high fever. People with weak immune systems, high amounts of iron in their body or liver disease can experience more serious issues.

“These individuals are at very high risk of death when they get infected with this organism. Anyone can get infected, but that subset of people can potentially have very serious outcomes,” he said.

Blomberg considers herself lucky, but said she is still not in the clear.

“The swelling has gone down, so now the wound can actually start to heal,” she said.

She said she will now be a lot more cautious.

“I’ve always been in a boat whenever I went fishing, but if you are going to do surf fishing, wear shoes,” she suggested. “Go to the hospital as soon as you can if anything is starting to happen.”

Doctors also said to prevent the water-borne infection, be careful handling fishing hooks and wear protective gear in area waterways. If you do break the skin, clean it immediately with a diluted bleach mixture, and if you have an open wound, consider avoiding salt water altogether.

Source: WDSU