Doctors Battle to Stop Spread of Deadly Bacteria

While her elderly mother and three young sons waited in their one-room home Friday, Ana Maria Serrano Chavez underwent more surgery to stop the spread of flesh-eating bacteria that has cost her both legs and part of her right hand.

Firefighters, workers from the Anaheim Area Credit Union and hospital employees held a bake sale, took donations over the phone and dug into their own pockets to raise money for the Mexican immigrant and her family. By late afternoon, they had collected more than $2,000.

“People are coming in left and right,” said credit union receptionist Jules Johnson. “Just the whole course of events with the family--how quickly it can devastate her, the children, affect the whole outcome of a family--is terrible.”

Chavez’s husband, Roberto Garcia Serrano, stayed at her bedside at Anaheim Memorial Medical Center through the morning.

“Her lips are so, so dry,” he said in tears, speaking through a translator later. “I take a little water and put it on her lips. I ask her if she wants to see her mother, if she wants to see the children. She just blinks ‘yes,’ and goes back to sleep.”

Anaheim firefighters rushed Chavez to the emergency room early Tuesday after her twisted ankle turned into a raging infection that she told her family felt like ants crawling on her leg.

Hospital officials said she was a victim of a virulent, often deadly microbe, streptococcal necrotizing fasciitis. The bacteria, which prey on small cuts or other injuries, are an extremely rare form of the bacteria that cause strep throat.

Surgery to scrape away dead tissue was performed late Friday afternoon. Chavez’s condition remained critical, with a guarded prognosis, according to hospital spokeswoman Elizabeth Bear.

Serrano said he was extremely grateful for the donations.

“I want to buy a car if God lets me,” he said. “Thanks to God and the public, we’ve been getting so much help.”

The quick-moving disease is the latest tragedy for the poor immigrant family, which moved from Guanajuato seven years ago. Serrano, who formerly worked at a recycling facility, fell into a garbage pit four months ago and survived by holding himself up by his armpits. He tore the ligaments in both arms, and the family has been surviving on meager disability benefits. The family rents a room in a house.

“He is a very caring, very humble man,” said Anaheim firefighter Richard Chavez, no relation to the family, who responded to the family’s emergency call Tuesday and set up the trust fund as head of the firefighters union. “Even before we saw how sick she was, this was obviously a family that was in great need. And they have really cute, polite children.”

There has been some other good news for the family in recent days. Immigration officials gave permission for Chavez’s mother to fly in from Mexico, and she visited her daughter late Thursday night. A member of the credit union called to say he might have a job for Serrano. The hospital and the physicians are treating the sick woman for free, Bear said.

Chavez was being kept in a special negative-airflow room to try to retard the disease process.

“As long as she comes out alive and she sees her kids, that is all I ask for,” Serrano said.

Donations can be made to the Anaheim Firefighters in trust for Ana Maria Garcia, in care of the Anaheim Area Credit Union, 2390 E. Orangewood #106, Anaheim CA 92806, or by calling (714) 978-0190.