A father of three from Pennsylvania is fighting for his life after a high fever he initially mistook for flu turned out to be two deadly infections.
From Fever to Emergency Surgery
Peter Atkinson, a 49-year-old business owner from North Wales, Pennsylvania, spiked a fever of 104 degrees. Believing it was influenza, the severity of his situation only became clear when he showed doctors a mass in his right shoulder last month.
Within minutes, he was rushed into emergency surgery and intubated. He was diagnosed with the rare and aggressive infection necrotizing fasciitis, often called flesh-eating bacteria, which rapidly destroys healthy tissue.
A Traumatic Fight for Survival
The infection triggered sepsis, a life-threatening immune system overreaction that starves the body of blood and oxygen. This caused Atkinson's kidneys to fail, plunging him into critical condition.
His sister, Marietta Atkinson, described the event as "probably one of the most traumatic" for the family, coming just years after they lost another sister to sepsis in 2016. Doctors were initially pessimistic about his chances of survival, and he was placed on a ventilator.
While he showed signs of improvement by Christmas and has since been taken off the ventilator, his kidneys have not recovered. He now requires dialysis to filter waste from his blood.
A Long Road to Recovery
Atkinson, the primary provider for his wife Sherri and their three daughters, is unable to work at his towing company. His wife spoke of the difficulty of seeing her normally active husband in such a state, calling him a "fighter" and a "go-getter."
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates there are between 700 and 1,150 cases of necrotizing fasciitis in the United States each year. The condition has a death rate of 10 to 40 percent and leads to amputations in one in five cases. Sepsis is far more common, affecting an American every 20 seconds and killing about 200,000 annually.
Atkinson is scheduled for another procedure and hopes to move to a rehabilitation facility soon. A GoFundMe page set up by a friend has raised $16,000 towards an $18,000 goal to support the family, stating the road ahead will be "long and difficult."
