A woman from Ohio was shocked after waking up from a coma and finding out that both her legs and arms have been partially amputated after contracting an intense infection from her dog’s saliva.
Marie Trainer woke up from a 10-day coma and spent 80 days in the hospital — told Fox 8 Cleveland that she has no idea what happened and only remembers falling sick.
She said: “When I opened my eyes I didn’t know where I was,”
“Then I found out everything. Being in a coma for 10 days having this thing. My dog licked me… my dogs lick me all the time,”
“It was very hard to find out that they had to remove my legs and my arms… very hard to cope with.”
Marie and her husband, Matthew Trainer had just returned home from a vacation in the Caribbean. The couple thought it was the flu when Marie felt nauseous and had a bad backache.
“Her temperature went up then went down to about 93 degrees, that’s when we rushed her to the hospital,” said Matthew.
Marie underwent aggressive treatments at Aultman Hospital but her condition did not improve and continued to deteriorate.
“So we were getting new symptoms and worsening symptoms very rapidly,” said Gina Premier, Marie’s step-daughter and a nurse practitioner at Aultman Hospital in Canton.
When there was no improvement shown, Marie was placed into a medically induced coma as her limbs began to deteriorate as a result of gangrene. Her blood test result was terrible as he had been diagnosed with capnocytophaga.
Dr. Margaret Kobe, Medical Director of Infectious Disease at Aultman, said “capnocytophaga is a bacteria commonly found in the saliva of dogs and a smaller percentage of cats.’’
Doctors think that Marie’s two dogs at home may have licked a small scrape on her arm.
“Fairly common in the oral flora or the mouth of a dog and it can be transmitted through a bite or sometimes just contact with saliva,” said Dr. Kobe. “That organism is very virulent. It has the ability to induce your immune system to do some pretty horrible things.”
Doctors tried their best to remove as many blood clots as possible from Marie but couldn’t save her limbs because it was too late. They said if they had not performed the amputations, Marie would have died.
“It was so rapid in progression… there was nothing they could do,” Marie’s step-daughter said.