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On June 19th, 59-year old Tom Buttenham picked a scab from a bug bite near his ankle, he went to bed and thought nothing of it. When he woke up he says it was hot and swollen, “the next morning I had a big bruise on my leg and it started to swell up the side. I went to work and if it wasn’t for the guys at my work, I wouldn’t be here.”
By the time he arrived at Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, a thin red line had crawled up his thigh from the site of the wound. He was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, flesh eating disease. It had spread up his entire leg and was working its way to his hip. Orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Majdi Qutob recommended an amputation. Flesh eating bacteria creates a toxin that kills tissue so rapidly a patient can die within hours and it’s sometimes the only option. Buttenham refused, “He said, are you willing to give up your leg for your life or your life for your leg. And I said, I’m ready. Tell my wife to cremate me.”
Qutob and his team performed 3 surgeries, carefully removing the dead tissue from Buttenham’s leg and giving him a cocktail of antibiotics to quell the infection. He’s lucky to be alive.
Surprisingly, his is not the only case of flesh eating disease Dr. Qutob has encountered this summer. He’s one of four, which Qutob says is incredibly rare, “You probably only see it maybe once a year in a hospital. Sometimes there’s an increase and you get them in runs but for the most part it’s very very rare to see.”
It’s difficult to tell whether the cluster of cases at Jo Brant is part of a greater trend. Public Health agencies don’t specifically track flesh eating disease. They do track group A streptococcus, which causes flesh eating disease. But it often sits dormant in healthy individuals and it’s much more likely to cause strep throat or impetigo than flesh eating disease. Not much is known about the origin of necrotizing fasciitis other than it typically occurs in people who already have a compromised immune system. Buttenham says Health Canada told him his bug bite likely made a pathway to his system that lined up in a perfect storm.
Not all cases cause redness or swelling like Buttenham’s. Some patients’ only outward symptom is extreme pain. But because it’s so rare, Dr. Qutob doesn’t want people to worry about contracting it.
Only about 90-200 cases occur in all of Canada each year. About 30% of those are fatal. With that in mind, Buttenham is grateful to have both his leg and his life.
