Man loses leg to flesh-eating bacteria after swimming in Florida

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Thursday, May 7, 2015
Man recovering from flesh eating bacteria
Man recovering from flesh eating bacteriaAfter seven surgeries, doctors have amputated the man's leg and say he's lucky to be alive.

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Doctors are issuing a warning about swimming with open wounds after a man in Florida had to have his leg amputated because of a flesh-eating bacterial infection.

Zach Mody only had a minor cut on his toe when he went swimming off a Fort Myers beach in the Gulf of Mexico about a month ago. Now, he's in a hospital bed and is missing one leg.

"I would have never thought in a million years this would have happened to me," Mody told ABC affiliate WZVN-TV.

His symptoms started shortly after his visit to the beach.

"I noticed my foot was a little irritated and it just had a little red spot on it," Mody recalled.

Twelve hours later, Mody said the pain became unbearable. He checked himself into Health Park Hospital.

"By the time that I got from downstairs to the operating room, there were these big giant blood blisters on my foot," Mody said.

Doctors diagnosed it as a flesh-eating bacteria that quickly spread up his leg. A doctor told him at that time that it was a surgical emergency and that amputation was a possibility.

Mody, a master carpenter and avid motorcyclist, would undergo seven surgeries before doctors finally removed his leg.

"This is horrible. It hurts," Mody told WZVN-TV. "The mental aspect you have to have to keep a smile on your face to go through something like this. I don't know how I'm doing it."

Recent water tests of the area where Mody was swimming came back negative for any dangerous levels of bacteria.

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