Report: Teen Who Battled Flesh-Eating Disease Returns to Whitman

Alexis Hanford, a Bethesda teen who contracted a flesh-eating disease, has returned to Walt Whitman High School to take classes part-time, The Gazette 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 Washington Post reported.

Hanford endured 17 surgeries to cut away dead skin and muscle and the teen will likely walk with a leg brace for the rest of her life, according to The Gazette.

Hanford is taking two classes -- independent study and computer programming -- and hopes to begin taking pre-calculus soon, The Gazette reports. As part of her independent study course, Hanford is working to design less expensive and more comforable crutches.

"A lot has changed in my life over the past few months,” Hanford told The Gazette. “The fact that I can return to school is an amazing thing.”

Read the full story at The Gazette.