Unfortunately, a woman in California lost four limbs after getting a terrible bacterial illness.
A fundraiser for 40-year-old mom Laura Barajas was started online. It says that her family and friends think she got the infection after buying and eating tilapia “from a local market in San Jose.”
CBS 42 reported that Barajas has now had surgeries that will change his life after being in the hospital for almost two months.
One of her close friends, “Anna Messina, told KRON 4, “It’s been really hard on all of us.” It’s” awful. Any of us could have been hurt by this.
“She was very close to dying. Adding, “She was on a respirator.” “They put her into a coma with medicine.” She had black lips, feet, and fingers. She had full-blown sepsis, and her kidneys were failing.
Since then, “Messina has set up a GoFundMe page for Barajas to” try to get money to help her friend deal with future problems and rising medical costs. She talks about how her friend “cooked herself dinner after a long day” on the page, but the next day, “Laura realized something was terribly wrong” and was identified with vibrio vulnificus because of it.
“Laura has been fighting for her life in the hospital for more than a month. She now has four missing limbs.” “On September 13, 2023, all four of Laura’s limbs had to be cut off to save her life,” writes Messina.
USA Today says that “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently sent out a very important warning about the” dangers of bacterial illnesses, especially vibrio vulnificus. It is possible to get the infection from “eating raw or undercooked fish or from letting open cuts touch coastal” water.
The CDC says “at least a dozen people have died from the infection across the country this year.”
Dr. Natasha Spottiswoode, an infectious disease expert at UCSF, says that this bacteria is very dangerous, especially for people whose immune systems aren’t working well. “The ways you can get infected with this bacteria are one — you can eat something that’s contaminated with it the other way is by having a cut or tattoo exposed to water in which this bug lives,” Dr. Spottiswoode talked about.
The CDC says that between 150 and 200 cases of this happen each year in the United States. About one in five of these cases end in death, which can happen as soon as one to two days after the first symptoms appear.
Messina has now strongly told other people to take precautions. “People should take sensible precautions like if you have a cut avoid getting immersed in water until it’s well healed,” she stated, adding: “Be thankful for what we have right now because it can be taken away so quickly so easily.”