Minor Fishing Accident Leads to Flesh-Eating Necrotizing Fasciitis Infection on Florida Man’s Hand
OutdoorHub Reporters 04.26.19
If you spend enough time fishing, you will inevitably have a close call or two with a fishing hook. Perhaps just a small prick on the finger as you tie on your favorite lure, but it was only a “minor prick” that led to one Florida man almost losing his hand from a flesh-eating necrotizing fasciitis infection.
While fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, angler Mike Walton suffered an injury he’d endured hundreds of times before – a fish hook caught in his hand. Apparently, Walton told Tampa Bay’s WFTS he “didn’t think much of it.”
Of course, that was before black blisters started to appear and his hand began to swell..
Once determining regular antibiotics weren’t cutting it, Walton got in the car and drove himself to the emergency room. There, doctors informed him he would need immediate surgery or he might lose his arm or possibly worse.
“They said in a few hours, this would have gone up my arm into my chest and I wouldn’t have been here. There was no saving me,” Walton told FOX 13.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this particular flesh-eating infection known as “necrotizing fasciitis” is rare and deadly. The bacteria responsible for causing the infection enters the body through even the smallest break in the skin and spreads rapidly from there.
Flesh-eating bacteria infects Florida man fishing off coast of Palm Harbor in Gulf of Mexico; @NicoleSGrigg shares his story >> https://t.co/pOkYNbJI28 pic.twitter.com/g3RC1hWf6z
— ABC Action News (@abcactionnews) April 24, 2019
Walton, who reportedly works in construction, said this injury won’t stop him from fishing in the future.
“I want to go right now,” he said. “It ain’t going to slow me down. It’s one thing I enjoy.”
Doctors were successfully able to contain the infection and Walton will likely have to be on antibiotics for some time, but at least he’ll be able to hit the waters again in the near future!
