My name is Ellena and I am an NF survivor. On November 3, 2000, I had my first baby. I had a high-risk pregnancy. A year before I had a miscarriage so I was happy to have my baby, to be with him and just be a new mom. I had a cesarean section and was let out of the hospital 5 days later with an opening with my cesarean. I had to have home nursing two times a day (to do the dressing change).

About two weeks later we noticed redness and a bad odor coming from the opening. I also was sore. One of the nurses had me go to the hospital to see a doctor. I saw the doctor and she irrigated it and repacked it then sent me home. Then we noticed the redness on my stomach had gotten bigger and the odor was still there. So one of the nurses drew a line around it with a pen and told me if it got bigger then this go to the hospital. On Friday, I went to a doctor’s appointment that I had for a follow up on my opening. The doctor barely looked at it and said that I was fine and didn’t need more home nursing. Only if the nurses agreed. They were shocked he said that and they decided to still see me.

On Sunday night I was feeling really sick. I had a temperature of 104 and had the chills real bad. When I woke up Monday morning I felt very weird like everything was a blur and had noticed a very dark purple spot on my stomach. The nurse had called me that morning before she came over and asked how I was doing. I told her my situation and she told me to go to the hospital right away. My sister drove me to the hospital and an infection doctor saw me right away. Then he had got a surgeon and they told me I would have to have surgery right now. The doctors called my sister in a told her. They said that I would probably be in the hospital for a couple of days. The last thing I remember was saying bye to my sister.

When my family and boyfriend came to see me in the hospital they knew something was really bad because I was on the respirator and had tubes everywhere. The doctors took my family to a separate room and told them that I had a bad flesh eating disease that had gotten into my blood. They had to take out almost five pounds off my stomach and that my body had went into shock. They were also told that I had less then a five percent chance of making it. They gave me paralyzing medicine and put me in an induced coma for about two weeks. I don’t remember anything at all the first month. I was on the respirator to long because my lungs kept collapsing that they had to put a trac on me.

I had to relearn to move every part of my body. I could not move anything. I was in the hospital for six months. When I left I could not walk, get up on my own, or lift my hands over my head. I had also got yellow jaundice. Also I now have asthma. The hardest thing about this was not being able to be with or hold or feed my baby. I couldn’t even change my son’s diaper. I cry a lot when I think about missing almost the whole first year of my baby's life. But I am glad I am here with him now, and for a long time to come.