New SC Mom Hospitalized With Flesh-Eating Bacteria
Days after giving birth to twins, a South Carolina mother has been hospitalized for what doctors say is a rare flesh-eating infection.
The development follows the similar affliction of a Georgia graduate student, who lost her left leg and may lose her fingers. But experts say the South Carolina case, though serious, is less severe than the Georgia one and caused by a different bacterium.
Lana Kuykendall, 36, gave birth to healthy twins at an Atlanta hospital last week. When the new family of four returned to their home in Piedmont, the mother — who is also a paramedic — noticed a pain and rash on her left leg.
As the spot began to spread, Kuykendall went to a local hospital, where she has since undergone several surgeries but was improving Thursday.
“She’s stable,” Darren Kuykendall, the woman’s husband, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Greenville Memorial Hospital.
Friends and family are helping care for the couple’s week-old twins, who are healthy. A fund has been set up to help with Kuykendall’s care.
The condition is called necrotizing fasciitis, the same disorder that has Georgia graduate student Aimee Copeland fighting for her life in a hospital several hundred miles away. Doctors say Copeland, 24, has lost a leg and could lose all her fingers from the infection that spread days after she suffered a deep cut while zip-lining.