Invasive strep: ‘Don’t wait’ to seek care, N.S. woman warns on long road to recovery
Global News
A woman who had to be rushed into surgery after getting flesh-eating disease from invasive group A strep is warning others not to wait if they feel symptoms.
Kelly Doucet won’t be forgetting her one-year wedding anniversary anytime soon.
Instead of having a romantic dinner with her husband, Steve, the Yarmouth, N.S., woman was in hospital recovering from painful surgery.
She’s now warning others that symptoms of invasive group A strep should not be ignored.
“If we had waited, Steve would be planning (my) funeral,” Doucet told Global News in an interview from her hospital bed. “So we were so thankful to have an anniversary.”
Doucet said it all began on April 10, when she developed a headache and flu-like symptoms. Her symptoms got worse over the next two days, and progressed to a painful, toonie-sized “hot spot” on the side of her breast.
The spot would turn out to be the beginning of necrotizing fasciitis – also known as flesh-eating disease – which can be caused by invasive group A streptococcus.
Strep A bacteria found on the skin and throat can cause a wide range of diseases in children and adults. Invasive group A strep occurs when the bacteria causes deeper infections, isolated from a normally sterile body site, such as the blood.
Doucet went to the hospital the evening of April 12, after she got a call from her mother who had read a Global News story about a Nova Scotia couple who died within hours of each other after contracting invasive group A strep.
A camp and sacred fire were erected on the city-owned land on Dec. 26 after contractors began cutting trees in the forest three days earlier.
Net-neutrality rules require internet service providers to treat data and users equally rather than restricting access, slowing speeds or blocking content for certain users.
Health officials have said the person was older than 65, had underlying medical problems and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock.
As 2025 arrives, experts break down the trending diets, highlighting the science-backed winners, the cautious choices to consider and the fads that might not live up to the hype.
"I think it's fair to say from a scientific perspective, if they have the same hardwiring, they're going to have the same emotions (as humans)."
The new report recommends health care providers should encourage alcohol screening and treatment referrals as needed, and efforts to increase general awareness should be expanded.
J35 made international headlines in 2018 when she carried the young whale’s carcass with her for more than two weeks and 1,500 kilometres.
The new Know Alcohol calculator was developed by researchers at UVic's Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and calculates personalized health risks from drinking.
A single organization called Éco Entreprises Québec is to now manage recycling across the province on behalf of companies that produce packaging and paper.
The teen became the first critically ill pediatric patient with avian influenza in North America and information was published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A sea otter has been seen clambering onto a surfboard and following surfers off Vancouver Island, prompting reminders from Fisheries and Oceans Canada to avoid close interactions with the mammals.