I Thought I Cut My Leg, but I Had Deadly Necrotizing Fasciitis' - Newsweek
I was living in Carrollton, Georgia, back in 2012 while completing my master's degree in psychology. I was 24 years old and had dreams of becoming a wilderness therapist. But on May 1 that year, my life changed.
I had finished a morning shift as a waitress. After work, I visited my friend at her house, behind which is a little river. It was a beautiful spring day so we decided to walk through it.
That's when we stumbled across an old homemade zip line that was six feet long. We assumed it was made for kids, but we all still wanted to zipline across the river. I had been rock climbing and scaling cliffs the weekend before; I was adventurous.
My ziplining injury
As I was on the wire, it suddenly snapped, causing me to fall into the river and cut my leg. I was badly injured with a large, deep, curved wound that took 22 surgical staples to close when I went to the hospital that day.
After returning home, I took a few days off work to rest. My friends were checking in and providing food for me, but aside from my injury, I felt fine.
A near-death experience that changed everything
But on the third day, I lost control of my bowel and bladder during my sleep. I could no longer move or speak. The only thing I managed to say to my boyfriend was: "I think I'm dying."
It happened very suddenly. I didn't know it then, but it was necrotizing fasciitis, a rare bacterial infection that usually spreads quickly in the body and can cause death if not treated immediately.
I was delirious and in a state of shock. My boyfriend thought he had maybe given me too much pain relief medication; we had no idea that it was a deadly infection.
What I didn't realize then was that it had taken 72 hours for the bacteria to consume my left leg, all the way up to my hip. All of my vital organs had begun to shut down.
My boyfriend took me to the hospital straight away. As soon as the doctors had assessed me, they told me that what I had mumbled to him was right—I was dying. The infection was in my bloodstream.
My miraculous recovery
Immediately, the doctors began removing my dead tissue, which is called debridement. They then flew me to another hospital that had a hyperbaric chamber and a renowned burns unit.
What I didn't know at the time was that doctors often treat flesh-eating bacteria similarly to how they would treat a burn because of the harsh way it consumes one's flesh.
But on my way to the hyperbaric chamber, I went into cardiac arrest twice. I had to be resuscitated and put on full life support. The doctors operating on me told my parents there was a 99 percent chance I would not make it through the night.
My family was very scared. They were faced with the worst thing a parent could ever dream of—the possibility of their child dying.
My parents are very spiritual and so are a lot of my friends. So, the psychology department where I was completing my master's held an all-night prayer vigil for me. I survived that night and got taken off life support after two weeks.
Some of the doctors had described my recovery as mind-boggling, astonishing, and incredible.
The physiological indicators, based on my lactic acid levels alone, were that I should have died. But during those two weeks that I was on life support, all the veins and capillaries in my hands and my right foot completely collapsed, so they had to be amputated.
Following my recovery, I woke up every day and asked what had happened to me, for some time. Eventually, I began to remember certain things. I remembered my dad showing me my hands and telling me that they were going to be amputated. They were curled up and black and purple. It was a shocking moment.
Before that, I had read a book called Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel, which is an inspirational book about the power of the human spirit. I believe that my studies in psychology supported me at that moment because I realized that although I was in a very bad situation, the power of the human spirit is fierce.
Living with my new body
After coming off the pain medication the doctors had given me, I started to consider how having my new body was going to affect me and my romantic relationship.
When I saw my body for the first time in a full-length mirror, I was shocked.
I went through a long process of grief, and I slowly began to rediscover my own identity and values. I realized that being an attractive woman made me place a lot of my value on my outer appearance. I had to focus on myself internally following my injury.
On July 1, I left the intensive care unit and in August, I went to rehab. I re-learned basic life skills like how to exercise, brush my teeth, and cook with my new body. I was in a spinal cord injury hospital and was surrounded by some people who couldn't move anything but their faces. That allowed me to put things into perspective.
I thought: "Here I am in the most tragic circumstances I could imagine, but people around me would trade places with me in a heartbeat."
Soon after my injury, I feared that I couldn't be a wilderness therapist anymore. But something more precious stemmed out of this. The longer I lay in the hospital bed, seeing all of the isolated people around me, I started to realize that I was among the population that needed outdoor opportunities the most.
So, in 2017, after completing my master's in social work, I began a nonprofit organization called the Aimee Copeland Foundation, which now provides all-terrain wheelchairs to state parks so people with disabilities can enjoy the great outdoors.
I also decided to become a therapist, which I hadn't been sure of before. Although I wasn't taking 10-mile hikes in the woods with people for therapy, I was doing something similar that involved outdoor space, and holistic and alternative therapies.
Before my injury, I was a kayaker, a trail runner, and I did yoga. But afterward, I realized that there were some things that I couldn't do anymore. This prompted me to explore new hobbies like swimming.
It also urged me to start asking for help, which is something I never did before.
For example, I got in touch with organizations that helped people with disabilities to kayak. I had to ask people questions and figure out new ways to be creative with sports, and I found lots of wonderful things that I don't think I would've explored if my injury hadn't happened.
I am grateful for my life and want others to feel the same. In 2019, I launched a group counseling practice. The purpose of this was to offer affordable therapy to people who are uninsured or underinsured. I then launched The Center For Inner Healing, providing healing through breathwork, hypnotherapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
Exploring new relationships
I underwent a lot of life transitions following my near-death experience. I felt that my boyfriend at the time had difficulty adjusting to my new body and it took me two years to pluck up the courage to end the relationship. That was another grieving process for me, but once I began online dating, I felt more confident. I realized that nothing was wrong with me and that I was still attractive.
Still, I had to redefine what beauty meant to me internally and realize that although I had a few missing limbs, I'm a highly intelligent and interesting person.
I met my husband online in 2015. After realizing that we had over 50 mutual friends, we began dating and a few years later, we got married. In 2021, we had a small ceremony at our lake house in South Carolina, built by my grandfather. It was special for me, as I had been spending summers there since I was a baby.
What I would tell my younger self
Over the years, I have written my younger self a lot of letters. I have spoken with her a lot. The one thing that I would tell her is that everything is unfolding as it should.
I realize that grief is the continuation of love for something that is no longer here. So, to grieve is to have loved something very deeply. I loved my old body and my old life, and that's okay. But being able to cry, mourn, and talk about my situation with people who understood me was a very important part of my rediscovery process.
Grief is not always graceful; it's messy, but it's a part of us. It's a part of the human experience. To avoid feeling that is to split ourselves off from a deep part of the heart that connects us to ourselves.
Aimee Mercier is a Holistic Psychotherapist Creator and CEO of Aimee Copeland Foundation, All Terrain Georgia, Grant Park Counseling Group and Asheville Center for Inner Healing. You can find out more information about her here.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Newsweek associate editor, Carine Harb.
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