10:31 AM PDT on Wednesday, July 20, 2005

By TERESA BELL, kgw.com Staff

A man boating on the Willamette River cut his leg and within hours, he became violently ill. Doctors said a bacteria from the river was eating away at his flesh and bone.

KGW

Temporarily confined to a wheelchair, Chris Wardius explains how he cut his leg, allowing the bacteria to get inside.

Flesh-eating bacteria is sometimes found in lakes and rivers and it’s more prevalent when the weather gets hot. If not treated, health experts say the bacteria can lead to serious health complications.

In Chris Wardius’s case, doctors were concerned that his leg might have to be amputated.

The 54-year-old makes his living selling boats and he loves being on the water. He was on a boating trip on July 3rd when his life took a painful turn.

Wardius and his family were boating on the Willamette River when his boat ran out of gas. He was trying to keep it from getting stuck in the shallows when something dropped on his ankle and cut his leg.

“Like a pencil eraser on a pencil, that was about the size of the wound,” he recalled. “It’s still very, very painful to walk now."

Just a few hours later, his leg began to swell. Wardius knew something serious was wrong.

“That night, I started going through these fevers and shivers… I was nauseous and puking, it was horrible,” he said.

He went to a doctor the next day.

“They said, if you don't go to the hospital right now and have surgery, you’re going to lose your leg,” Wardius recalled.

It took two surgeries to clean out the bacteria, leaving Wardius scarred for life.

Dr. Paul Sehdev specializes in infectious diseases. He treated Wardius and said bacteria can get into a person’s system through large or deep cuts in the skin and once it’s inside, it goes to work fast.

“In certain situations, it can be a very aggressive and life-threatening infection,” Sehdev said.

But he added that infections as severe as the one that Wardius developed are rare.

If caught early, simple antibiotics can often kill the bacteria. That’s something Wardius wishes he knew before he cut his leg while boating in the Willamette River.

(KGW reporter Keely Chalmers also contributed to this article.)