Report: Teen Who Battled Flesh-Eating Disease Named Whitman Homecoming Princess
Alexis Hanford became infected after cutting her leg while vacationing near a California lake, The Washington Post reports.
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Walt Whitman High School junior Alexis Hanford, 16, celebrated homecoming with her peers Friday after battling a flesh-eating disease that caused her to undergo 17 operations, The Washington Post reports.
The teen contracted a strain of necrotizing fasciitis after cutting her leg in a California lake while on vacation in July, according to the report. Though doctors successfully eradicated the infection, the former athelete remains in a wheelchair and will need to learn to walk again, The Post reported.
Hanford was named homecoming princess during Friday's festivities, The Post reported.
“Even though it can be frustrating to have to deal with this, there are always people who are worse off,” Hanford told The Post.
Friends at Whitman have launched the “Alexis Healing Project,” a fundraising campaign to benefit the Children's National Medical Center, where Hanford was treated.
John Haxo
4:14 pm on Monday, October 15, 2012
I swim in a lake and have looked in the Aeromonas Hydrophila bacteria that infected Alexis' wound and caused so much damage.
From the Food and Drug Administration's "Bad Bug Book": Aeromonas hydrophila is found in most, if not all, freshwater or brackish water environments.
Swimmers everywhere should know that if they have wound, or get a wound while in water, Aeromonas should be suspected and immediately treated with the proper antibiotics (it is resistant to some antibiotics but not all).
Dick A
6:07 pm on Monday, October 15, 2012
Yep, she rates princess but not queen. Queen is reserved for brainless but beautiful broads.