11-year-old Richmond boy recovering from flesh-eating disease
Doctor stresses disease is extremely rare but can impact people with large breaks in the skin
Eleven-year-old John Chen has spent the last three months in hospital.
In that time, the Richmond boy has undergone 18 surgeries and lost tendons and skin as doctors try and treat the necrotizing fasciitis — better known as flesh-eating disease — attacking his body.
"It's been a long process. We've been in the hospital for two months, three weeks in the rehab centre here. We don't know how long it's going to be," John's father, Sam Chen, said.
Sam Chen says he wants to share his son's story so other families recognize the symptoms and get the earlier diagnosis John never did.
"No family wants to go through this."
Many surgeries
John's problems began with seemingly run-of-the-mill symptoms: fever, sore throat, leg pain.
His family took him to a doctor, who prescribed Advil for the pain and sent him home.
John's pain was still there and he was sweating. His family took him to B.C. Children's Hospital and a team of doctors diagnosed him with the flesh-eating bacteria.
Then, the surgeries began.
"The muscle of his right calf was taken out. The left leg, the debridement surgery is so deep a big portion of the muscle's been taken out, also a big portion of the muscle's been taken out of the thigh," Sam Chen
"His right hand, because there's been so much surgery his tendons got a lot of scars which limit his right hand's finger movement. And his left bicep was taken out."
Extremely rare condition
Dr. Michael Silverman, chief of infectious diseases at the London Health Sciences Centre, says it's important to remember how rare flesh-eating disease is: only about two or three people in 100,000 will contract it.
The disease often starts with contracting Group A strep, a usually harmless infection. But Chen says John was suffering from an invasive form of A strep before his diagnosis, which is where it can become harmful.
"Rarely … it can get access deep into the tissues and start spreading deep into the tissues and that's when it causes this devastating infection," he said.
He says the people most at risk are those with a large break in the skin: it can happen to children getting over chicken pox, or adults experiencing shingles or undergoing major surgery.
'We also feel loved'
Silverman says it's difficult to know how any individual patient's recovery will go, but it can be a long-term prospect involving extensive rehab.
Sam Chen hopes when his son recovers, he will be able to play sports again. He loves golf especially.
But he takes pride in his son's bravery facing his ordeal.
"Every time he wakes from his sedation, he says, 'dad, you're not brave enough,'" Sam Chen said.
"It's very, very painful, but we also feel loved because God saved his life and saved his four limbs."
A friend of the Chen family has started an online fundraising effort to help John's recovery.
You can find more information about flesh-eating disease at HealthLink BC.
With files from Anita Bathe