One man's trip to a North Carolina beach ended up with a trip to an emergency room. He ended up having part of his thumb amputated after making a simple avoidable mistake on the beach.
53-year-old Greg Coleman often works with his hands. As a handyman, he's a bit MacGuyver when it comes to things. So when his wife wanted to go hunting for prehistoric shark teeth, he decided to make her a homemade strainer out of wire. Unfortunately, he ended up nicking and cutting himself on his hands on the North Carolina beach.
Coleman didn't clean the cuts or properly protect them from potential exposure to bacteria. Fast forward two days later after the North Carolina beach, and his thumb ballooned outward and got sore. Unfortunately, the bacteria was drug-resistant, and doctors had to amputate the tip of his thumb.
Speaking with Daily Mail, Coleman said, "The infection started to run up my arm to my shoulder. I got increasingly concerned about the state of my thumb and sought medical advice. Initially, I did a virtual doctor's visit to get some antibiotics but no one knew what it was or how to treat it. However, the pain continued to increase and on August 22, I went to an urgent care where I was given an injection of antibiotics and some more pills."
North Carolina Man Loses Part Of Thumb
He continued, "Just two days after that, I had to rush to the ER where they admitted me and put me on intravenous antibiotics." Coleman probably contracted MRSA or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus while at the North Carolina beach. He said it felt like his thumb was being "hit with a hammer over and over again."
Fortunately, the surgery ended up saving his life, but it left him with part of his thumb missing. Coleman believes there was bacteria at the North Carolina beach.
"I did hear about another lady who had a scratch on her leg that got infected as well with MRSA the same week and after visiting the same beach," he said. "As a child, I grew up on a farm and ran around all of the time with no shoes on. And I lived in Africa for a year as an adult where I did the same. I would always get little cuts on my feet but every thing always healed in the past. So it seems silly that I get a prick from a new wire in a first-world country. And seek medical aid and it goes so bad. If this had happened overseas when I was younger I definitely would have had to cut my thumb off to save myself."
