WHITTIER : Fund Set Up for Patient With Flesh-Eating Disease
A fund has been established to help pay medical expenses for a Brigham Young University professor who has been hospitalized in Whittier since he was diagnosed with the so-called flesh-eating disease.
David Cowles, 40, who is expected to survive, was in Los Angeles visiting in-laws when he noticed numbness in one of his arms, his son-in-law Brent Waite said.
On Dec. 27, the English professor was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis and hospitalized at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in Whittier.
Waite said neither doctors nor Cowles know how he contracted the disease. Cowles, he said, had a small cut on his finger, but that was not necessarily where the bacteria entered his body.
“Doctors say he’s passed the critical stage,” Waite said, adding that Cowles would have to undergo skin grafts to repair damage to his arm.
Two people in Southern California died of the disease late last year.
Those wishing to contribute may send checks to the Charitable Fund for David L. Cowles, Bank One, 1220 S. State St., Orem, Utah, 84058.
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