ORANGE PARK, Fla. - A Middleburg man who contracted flesh-eating bacteria is urging people to follow their instinct and seek help if they think something is wrong.
Robert Morgan, 51, and his doctors don’t know where he got the near-fatal infection, but by the time he made it to the emergency room at Orange Park Medical Center, he was hours from death.
“He looked like somebody who was about to die,” Dr. Justin Deaton, who treated Morgan in the ER, said. “Had he tried to wait at home for a little while longer before he came in, it’s very likely he would have died from this.”
It all started with shoulder pain just days before Christmas.
“I thought it was a pulled muscle,” Morgan said.
But the pain got worse, and Morgan then developed flu-like symptoms.
“I thought, well great now I’ve pulled a muscle and now I have the flu,” he said.
Morgan went to a local emergency room to get an X-ray on his shoulder, but nothing turned up. He said he was sent home with ibuprofen.
Soon the pain became unbearable, and Morgan went to the ER at Orange Park Medical Center.
Dr. Deaton was walking to the vending machine to get a soda when he saw Morgan checking in.
“He had that look,” Deaton said. “Like there is something wrong with him.”
Deaton first thought Morgan was having a heart attack, but when he lifted Morgan’s shirt he found what looked like a bruise on his side.
He recognized it as necrotizing fasciitis; flesh-eating bacteria. And it was spreading quickly.
“The bruising area had extended several inches past just the border I had drawn probably 20 minutes before,” Deaton said.
Deaton said the bacteria that caused Morgan’s infection is the same one that causes strep throat, and it’s relatively common. The difference is in the location of the infection; Deaton said the body can better fight it in the throat.
“The bacteria gets in the layer between the skin and the muscle and then runs rampant,” he said of the flesh-eating infection.
Morgan’s children and grandchildren were all in town to celebrate Christmas, which allowed them to see him before he went into his first surgery.
Now, after seven procedures, Morgan is on the mend. He said the whole ordeal has changed his outlook on life.
“You can’t take anything for granted,” he said. “You just have to live day by day and make the most of it.”
Both he and Dr. Deaton urged the public to trust their bodies and instinct. If something feels wrong, get it checked out. If you still feel uncomfortable, get a second opinion.
“The difference can be life and death,” Morgan said.