(Bay 9) – After a trip to Apalachicola and St. George Island in May, Mike O’Grady said something didn’t feel right. “I had this feeling on my buttocks that I was sore and it was difficult to sit on, and it was getting large, like, inflamed. Being a guy, I didn’t seem to think much about it, so I just figured it would get better. It didn’t,” the Citrus County man said.

He rushed to an emergency room in June, where doctors told him he had necrotizing fasciitis, better known as flesh-eating disease. He was hospitalized for more than two weeks, with surgeries every day the first six days he was there. “It was very intense pain,” O’Grady said. “The skin on my bottom was stretching, and it was getting quite large and red and hot, my wife said,” he added. READ MORE