John March

Sunday night, January 15th John became very ill and he and Sallie thought he had come down with the flu.  By Monday morning he felt better so they took a scheduled trip to the Keys. When they arrived late afternoon John became violently ill and they thought it was food poisoning.  He immediately went to bed in their hotel room.  In the middle of the night he noticed his foot was swollen and he remembered feeling a bite from something when he took out the garbage.  Monday morning his foot was very distended and had started to turn deep red and purple.  John and Sallie drove directly to the Fort Myers hospital ER.  After being fast tracked through the emergency room he was admitted to ICU with a white blood cell count of 30 (normal is 10-11).  When John B. heard this news, he immediately booked a ticket from Minneapolis to Fort Meyers and arrived at 9:45 PM. At 10:00 PM the on call foot surgeon performed an emergency surgery flushing out all necrotic (dead) tissue.  The tissue samples tested positive for necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh eating bacteria.  The bacteria tested positive for group A strep.  This is a very rare, but very deadly, blood bacterial infection.  After the first surgery the surgeon said John's healthy lifestyle saved his foot because his blood flow was so strong.  The surgeon left the wounds open to flush out more of the bacteria.  Three days later John underwent a second surgery.  Initially the results were very positive.  The surgeon did not have to amputate his foot, toes or take any bone. Praise God!