NEW ORLEANS, LA (WDSU) — Health officials are offering a word of caution about flesh-eating bacteria for those planning to head to the water this summer. It is often found in warm, salty brackish waters and in shellfish during the summer months.

Kelly Kohen Blomberg recently came into contact with this rare, but serious disease.

“It is affecting my life. I can’t work right now. I can’t do anything productive right now,” Blomberg said.

She contracted the bacteria when she was beach surf fishing on May 12 in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Whenever I shuffled my foot, it went directly into the mouth of something,” she said. “Blood everywhere, and it was not stopping.”

What started as two small scratches became a deep, wide wound on her foot. She ended up in the hospital.

“A week later, my foot was still huge and I’m starting to have, like, dead tissue around my foot so I’m just worried,” she said.

Dr. Obinna Nnedu, her infectious disease doctor at Ochsner Medical Center, said Blomberg contracted vibrio vulnificus, or flesh-eating bacteria.

“If you have an open wound and you go into the salt water off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf, you can be exposed to this bacteria. The other way is by eating raw oysters,” Nnedu said.

He said the spread of the bacteria happens within four to six hours and includes redness, swelling and high fever. People with weak immune systems, high amounts of iron in their body or liver disease can experience more serious issues.Read more: http://bit.ly/22vXLU9What others are clicking on: