Woman died 2 months after contracting flesh-eating bacteria while on vacation

Carol Martin has passed away after developing a flesh-eating bacteria called necrotizing fasciitis. Her husband believed that she was infected when she used a hot tub during a vacation to Florida.

In February this year, Carol, 50, traveled to Clearwater, Florida for a family vacation and to watch the races. The family stayed at a hotel while there.

After they returned to Indianapolis from their trip, Carol noticed a sore on her butt.

Carol's husband, Richard Martin, told WFLA: “She had like a pimple come up on her right butt cheek. She said it was kind of painful."

A week later, the sore no longer resembled a pimple as it was growing.

Fox 59 reported that Carol went to the doctor's office to get the sore checked out. However, St. Francis Hospital sent her home twice with antibiotics and a heating pad.

Richard thought Carol didn't receive proper medical treatment.

“At least by the second time they should have decided this is growing and maybe we should take a culture of it and see what it is,” he said, according to Fox 59.

Richard added: “I feel like they did not want to do that because she did not have insurance. The way they handled all this is screwed up.”

On Carol's third visit to St. Francis Hospital, doctors did a biopsy and discovered that she had necrotizing fasciitis, a rare, yet very dangerous, bacterial infection of the skin.

“In the emergency room they said ‘we are sorry but she has a flesh-eating bacteria, we have to rush her to surgery right now,'” Richard told WRTV.

Carol underwent two surgeries and spent more than two weeks in intensive care. Just days after they discharged her, Carol died at home.

“She made me lunch, I kissed her goodbye to go to work. I come home early in the morning and found her passed away,” Richard said, according to The Indy Channel. “We should have the answers and know why this went where it did.”

Richard believed that Carol may have contracted the infection at the Florida hotel’s hot tub.

“My thing is, nobody else got it, the flesh-eating bacteria. She was the only one that got in the hot tub,” he told WFLA.

An autopsy was completed after Carol’s death. The Marion County Coroner collected tissue samples from her body for analyzation of the infection to determine if the bacteria was the contributing factor in her death.

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