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| Think of that next time you go water tubing in the allegedly clean lake |
(CNN) -- A 24-year-old woman in a hospital bed fighting off flesh-eating bacteria has to be told repeatedly -- each time she wakes up -- what has happened, her parents told CNN on Monday.
The medication Aimee Copeland is given leads her to forget each time she falls asleep.
"It's scary to her," said her mother, Donna Copeland. She asks where she is and "doesn't understand."
Yet Aimee Copeland -- who has lost a leg and part of her abdomen to the virulent bacteria and may lose more, including her fingers -- is keeping her spirits strong, her father said. The master's student in psychology at the University of West Georgia was out with friends on May 1 near the Little Tallapoosa River, about 50 miles west of Atlanta, when she grabbed onto a homemade zip line. It snapped.
The accident left her with a gash in her left calf that took 22 staples to close.
Three days later, when the pain continued, a friend took her to an emergency room, where she was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis and flown to Augusta for surgery.
She had contracted the flesh-devouring Aeromonas hydrophila. The bacterium is "remarkably common in the water and in the environment," according to Dr. Buddy Creech, an assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University.
That is flat out terrifying, to Aimee and her family I sincerely hope for the best in your recovery.
This is what people don't get about my staunch refusal to go swimming in really anything but pools or the ocean. Lakes, Rivers, god forbid ponds, they're disgusting. You go right ahead and wade on into those cesspools. I'll play it safe here on the shore. Everyone thinks I'm being completely irrational but we'll see who's irrational when you scrape your foot on a rock or something and end up having to get your leg amputated. That's horrifying to me.
