San Fernando Valley : MARATHON MAN

One year after coming within a bicycle spoke’s width of losing his athletic career--and his life--to so-called flesh-eating bacteria, triathlete Bernie Donner chose an appropriate vehicle to carry him back 106 miles to the Sherman Oaks hospital that saved him: a bicycle.

Donner, whose wife, Laura, followed him in a car on the eight-hour ride from his Santa Barbara home to the burn center at Sherman Oaks Hospital, said his motive was twofold.

First, he said to a gathering of doctors and reporters, he needed to prove to himself that he had fully recovered from the rare, life-threatening condition called necrotizing fasciitis that threatened his leg last year.

And secondly, he said, he wanted to thank the medical personnel who nursed him back to health and to help other disease victims who wonder about their own ability to recover.

The bacterium--Group A streptococcus--doesn’t actually eat flesh. It chokes off capillaries, keeping blood, and therefore oxygen, from reaching tissue. The tissue then dies for lack of oxygen.