Man Contracts Flesh-Eating Bacteria After Minor Injury at Popular Vacation Spot

What started as a small scrape during a tropical vacation turned into a life-or-death nightmare for a Florida man who doctors say had only a 10 percent chance of survival.

Brian Roush, 62, was vacationing in the Bahamas over New Year’s with his girlfriend, Tonia Buford Stinson, celebrating the couple’s recent move-in together. While enjoying the trip, Roush tripped and scraped his ankle — a minor injury that didn’t stop him from swimming with pigs, riding waterslides, or enjoying the rest of the vacation, according to his daughter, Brittany Roush.

But on the flight home to Fort Lauderdale on January 3, everything suddenly changed.

“He became violently ill,” Brittany said. Within hours of landing, Roush was rushed to a hospital suffering from severe septic shock. Doctors intubated him and placed him on a ventilator as his condition rapidly deteriorated, according to a GoFundMe Brittany set up to help cover his medical expenses.

At the emergency room, the situation became even more alarming.

“His ankle erupted into blisters,” Brittany recalled, prompting doctors to suspect necrotizing fasciitis, a rare but deadly infection commonly known as flesh-eating disease. The condition destroys soft tissue at lightning speed and requires immediate intervention.

Roush was rushed into emergency surgery, where doctors removed infected tissue. But the infection had already triggered sepsis, a dangerous immune response that can shut down the body’s organs.

“Sepsis was wreaking havoc,” the GoFundMe explains. Roush’s liver, kidneys, and lungs failed, and he was placed into an induced coma on life support. His ankle became gangrenous, and doctors were forced to remove most of the flesh from his ankle up through his lower calf, down to the bone.

Doctors warned the family that his chances of surviving were just 10 percent.

Against the odds, Roush pulled through.

After a week of nonstop antibiotics and intensive life support, the infection finally cleared. His lungs and liver began to recover, a turn his family described as nothing short of miraculous.

Still, his road ahead is long. Roush now needs to be transferred to a long-term care facility, where he will have to relearn how to walk and regain the use of his limbs.

“He’s doing his best to stay positive despite waking up to this nightmare,” the fundraiser notes, adding that he’s been charming hospital staff to make sure the ice water keeps coming.

Necrotizing fasciitis is extremely rare, but medical experts warn that it can enter the body through even the smallest cuts. According to the Cleveland Clinic, preventing infection starts with basic wound care — thoroughly cleaning any cuts, keeping them covered, and avoiding pools, hot tubs, or natural bodies of water until the skin has healed.

For Roush and his family, a simple scrape became a brutal reminder of just how fast things can go wrong — and how powerful survival can be when everything is on the line.