Triathlete Beats ‘Flesh-Eating’ Strep Infection

In front of the media Friday, Bernie Donner was witty and upbeat. When the cameras turned, though, the emotions came.

“Thank you for saving my life,” he whispered in a choked-up voice, wrapping his arms around internal medicine specialist Dr. Peter Miao.

The amateur triathlete walked out of the Sherman Oaks Hospital Burn Center on Friday afternoon, hobbling on crutches back to life as it was before the so-called “flesh-eating bacteria” threw him into the medical spotlight and briefly threatened to take his life.

“I feel healthy. I feel strong,” he told a crowd of reporters, doctors, nurses and other burn-ward patients.

After more than three weeks of skin grafts and scrubbings, the 35-year-old private investigator and insurance adjuster admitted to being “a little nervous” about leaving the safety of the hospital and heading home to Santa Barbara.

“But,” he said, “I feel like a free man.”

Donner became the focus of intense media attention in early July when he contracted the infection known as “necrotizing fasciitis” and went from healthy athlete to near death in just three days.

A tabloid news frenzy had recently predicted medical doom after the deaths of seven people in Gloucester, England, from the bacteria, and Donner became one of the first victims in the Southland after that spate of publicity.

The strep infection--which according to doctors typically causes little more than a sore throat--apparently entered Donner’s body through a nick he suffered while shaving his legs before a bicycle ride, a common practice of road cyclists.

“I’m sort of thinking twice about shaving again,” he said Friday. “The hairy-leg look is back in for me.”

By the day after his ride, he began feeling like he had a cold or the flu, Donner said. Two days after that he was admitted to the hospital in critical condition and in shock, Miao said.

By that time, the bacteria had eaten a 6-by-12-inch swath of fascia--tissue that connects skin with muscle--in his right thigh.

Donner said Friday that while the damage to his leg was serious, early reports of massive muscle loss were exaggerated.

“I didn’t lose any muscle,” he said. “It was mostly fatty tissue, and I don’t mind losing fat. I’ll be bicycling down here to say hello to everybody” within a month.

While at least three other Southlanders have been infected with the bacteria in the last month, burn center director Dr. A. Richard Grossman said the disease is extremely rare and that people should be more worried about lighting strikes.

When asked if Donner was susceptible to a another infection, the silver-haired doctor flashed a wry smile, and made a modern comparison utilizing one of the key players in the O.J. Simpson saga.

The chances of that happening are “about the same as Al Cowlings getting indicted,” he said.