Alaska man treated for flesh-eating infection

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A man from Juneau, Alaska, contracted a rare infection from flesh-eating bacteria and was in satisfactory condition in a Seattle hospital after being flown in for emergency treatment, hospital officials said on Thursday.

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Ruben Pereyra was the latest person in the United States to suffer the flesh-eating disease that has also afflicted a Georgia graduate student who has had to undergo multiple amputations and a South Carolina woman who is a new mother of twins.

Pereyra arrived two weeks ago at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center from a Juneau hospital, Harborview spokeswoman Clare LeFond said.

Hospital officials did not give details about the extent, severity or circumstances of the case. But in an interview with the Juneau Empire newspaper, Pereyra's wife, Ana, said her husband apparently got the infection from a splinter in his hand.

She also told the paper that her husband had surgery and that an amputation was possible.

Necrotizing fasciitis, otherwise known as flesh-eating disease, can be caused when a wound is infected with group-A streptococci or by staphylococci, common bacteria that live on people's skin and in their noses.

Jim Strader, director of community relations for Juneau's Bartlett Regional Hospital, said he and other hospital officials in the Alaska capital had been assuring the public the disease was not communicable, he said.

"It's not an epidemic. It's not a reason to panic," he said, adding: "It's fortunately very rare. But it has a really high mortality rate."

The infection progresses rapidly and can quickly destroy muscles, skin and other tissues. "The wound sometimes looks like it's healed over, and then it comes back very, very quickly," Strader said.

Related:
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Aimee Copeland's new woe: Phantom limb pain
Dr. Nancy Snyderman: Flesh-eating infection 'hard to stop' (on this page)

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Addicted while pregnant (a) ' "monstrous tidal wave '

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By Catherine Olian
Rock Center

They are the youngest victims of the prescription drug epidemic, tiny babies born already addicted to the drugs their mothers were taking when they were pregnant. More than13, 000 babies a year are born in America addicted to prescription painkillers like OxyContin, hydrocodone and other narcotic drugs, according to a recent study released by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Rock Center visited three hospitals and two doctors spoke to many more. These babies may seem normal to birth, but within days they start having symptoms like severe shaking, tremors and more.

"They vomit. They have diarrhea. They'll often have fever, sweating ... extreme irritability, "said Dr. Mary Newport, the director of the neonatal unit at the Spring Hill Regional Hospital north of Tampa, Fla., in an interview airing Thursday to 07 pm/9 c on NBC.

The newborns also have trouble sleeping, feeding and they often wrote shriek in pain, their bodies craving the medication they're addicted to. The number of babies born this way has increased dramatically over the past five years, Dr. Newport said. This year she expects two treat nearly 20 times the number of infants going through withdrawal than she did in 2007.

"It's terrible," Newport said. "We sometimes feel that we have a neonatal drug rehabilitation unit."

A baby experiencing withdrawal from painkillers

Annabella was just a few weeks old and she couldn't stop crying. The only way the nurses could treat here symptoms was two give here morphine, a narcotic similar to the drug here mother took. As shocking as it may seem to give a baby the multiple doses of morphine a day, Dr. Newport said, "if we don't treat the baby ... the baby will develop seizures and the baby can die." Death can result from violent seizures, Dr. Newport said, that cause the baby to stop breathing, cutting off oxygen to the baby's heart and other vital body.

Many women become addicted to painkillers after they've been prescribed them by their doctors. Others, like Annabella's mother, 20-year-old Katelynn Yost, start taking painkillers recreationally, never thinking they'll become addicts.

"I thought I was going to stay in school and go to college," Yost said. "I didn't think I would end up doing drugs and being addicted to them."

When she unexpectedly got pregnant, Yost decided to get drug treatment for the sake of this child.

"I want to be there for my baby now and help here to have a good life," she said. But first, Annabella had to go through the painful stages of withdrawal. "I know it's all my fault," Yost said. "I'm the one that did it two here. It really hurts. "

There are no easy answers for pregnant addicts. Even if they want to get off the drugs quickly, doctors advise them not to.  Going cold turkey could cause them to miscarry. Instead, the women are switched from the painkillers they are on to methadone or buprenorphine, drugs that keep them stable and help curb their cravings. Right click, these drugs can also cause severe withdrawal symptoms in newborns.

Treating pregnant women addicted to prescription Med

"You're the customs either you can take the methadone and your child could be born addicted, or you detox, stop taking everything and your baby could die," one pregnant addict tariff us. Either way, "I'm deathly scared."

The sheer volume of babies born addicted is putting a strain on the healthcare system.  Healthy newborns typically stay in the hospital for a few days, but these babies stay weeks and sometimes months, at an average cost of more than $ 50,000 per child, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. Doctors at the Cabell Huntington Hospital in Huntington, West Virginia customs us that sometimes the neonatal unit is so full of babies going through withdrawal that newborns with other problems like prematurity have to be turned away due to lack of space.

Dr. David Chaffin, a maternal fetal medicine specialist to the Marshall University Medical Center participated in a multi-hospital study that had a stunning result: at least 10 percent of all babies in West Virginia are born with prescription anti-narcotics in their systems. He calls painkiller addiction among pregnant women "a" monstrous tidal wave "with no end in sight.

As for little Annabella Yost, she finished going through withdrawal. She's off all drugs and her mother says she's doing well. The outlook for these babies is guardedly optimistic, but until large scale, long-term studies of these kids have been completed, no one really knows if they'll have problems later in life.

All that the doctors can say for sure is that as long as women keep abusing prescription pain pills and doctors overprescribing the keep them, expect to see more and more babies suffer the consequences.

"They are the innocent victims," Dr. Newport customs us. "They had no control over it and yet they suffer tremendously for it."

Click here to watch Kate Snow's report, ' Born That Way, ' from NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

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After fighting for his life, holds mom finally newborn

Tommy Scott was not worried when his pregnant wife called to tell him she thought she was on the road with a migraine. But when he came home from work, Tommy found amber, 38 weeks pregnant, laying in their bedroom do not react with one eye open and the other closed, Moaning and vomiting.

"Rush of course everything through your head," Tommy told today's Natalie Morales. "I phoned 911 right away and the ambulance was there within 10 minutes and we were at the hospital right away. But it was crazy. "

Doctors determined that the 29-year-old Amber had a ruptured blood vessel in his brain — a condition that occurs in approximately six out of every 100,000 pregnancies.

Surgeons elected to deliver her baby by C-section, and then to operate on Amber's brain.

Initially, everything seemed fine as Amber started to come out of the anesthesia.  But then things took a frightening turn and she was once again responding. Realizing that the Ambers brain had started to swell rapidly, doctors removed part of her skull to protect her brain from being crushed against the bone.

A month later, Amber woke up, but was not well enough to talk himself. All the while watching her family visited regularly, showing Amber photos of baby, Adeline, she had yet to hold or even.

"We wanted to let her know the baby was okay," Tommy told today.  "Since day one we have shows her images."She started to smile a little.  She always smiles now. "

On Sunday, for the first time got Amber to keep her baby and begin to care for her.

"She kept the bottle and fed her," Tommy told today.  "She needs a little assistance, but the most important part, she grabbed the bottle and went right into the mouth. She knows what is going on. For the first time, smiled Adeline also. "

Amber is still got a long way to go. Doctors predict she will be in intensive rehab for weeks working to regain speech and motor skills.

But they say are positive signs.

"She now communicates with us," said Dr. Andrea Toomer, a doctor at West Jefferson Medical Center, just outside New Orleans, today. "She can tell us what she needs and what she wants, what Bothers her. She is able to ask questions about what is going on. "

It is enough for a start to Amber's mom.

"The fact that she witness Adeline now that she recognizes her, that makes me feel better," said Laura Rabalais today.

For Tommy, who had been looking forward to the day when he and his wife would be parents, it has been "bittersweet."

"Of course you satisfied," he told Morales. "I am happy that I am a father now. But of course I will be with yellow all the time, too.

"Amber was so excited for the last nine months. Her whole life, everything revolved around making sure everything was prepared for Adeline. It is so sad. But we try to include Amber in everything we can. We always tell her daily activities. We do our best to keep her informed. "

Tommy takes hope from the speed of Ambers progress so far.

"I never would have thought that we would be this much sooner, compared to where we were we first started," he told today. "She has motivation to get better, and I believe she will definitively".

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