As a hobby, many individuals enjoy caring for their gardens. For many people, taking care of grass and plants can be therapeutic. In a similar vein, this young father thoroughly appreciated it!
What he had believed to be a simple cut would quickly become the family’s greatest nightmare. We would like to alert you that there are some graphic photos in this story.
Neighbors would frequently spot Steve Palmer tending to his plants in his yard. The sight of the young father bent down, his tools in hand, tending to the plants in his garden was not unusual.
Anyone who owns a home or apartment where maintenance is required for plants understands how crucial it is to have the proper tools. Wearing gloves is essential for making dirt excavation easier and, more significantly, for hygienic reasons.
Steve’s digging and gardening work was a familiar sight to the family. After a big flood, the garden sustained damage, and many things needed to be fixed.
His spouse Laura, together with their two sons, Charlie, 7, and Jacob, 3, observed the typical scene where Steve was tending to the garden.
Father-of-two, 34, nearly died after catching rare flesh-eating bug while gardening https://t.co/jNk8NLYseJ pic.twitter.com/gYY7jxz08D
— Bistosh World (@BistoshW) March 30, 2020
According to the Daily Mail, Steve got a scratch on his hand after the operation was finished, but he waved it off, thinking it must have been from a plant.
He awoke the following morning with a fever and was unable to move his fingers. He felt worse and worse as the day wore on. His arm started going numb, and then the agony got really bad.
“I can’t believe something like this could happen from gardening. I’ve never known pain like it, it was excruciating,” Steve said.

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Steve began to panic, and the family called an ambulance.
‘By Sunday evening, the skin was rotting away – I’m lucky to be alive, the doctors told me the mortality rate was 75%,” says Steve.
“They had to tunnel the flesh from further up my arm and pull it down, just so I could have the skin graft over it,” he revealed.
(Daily Mail) #Inmate sues prison after flesh-eating bacteria ate through his arm : WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT: Texas inmate, Harold Millican, 37, has sued the state's prison system for failing to take him to the hospital to be .. https://t.co/X4Ge8g69yk pic.twitter.com/wvi57mDzGC
— StoriesFlow.com (@storiesflowcom) December 18, 2018
He was rushed to the hospital and had a total of four operations performed on his arm. The infection that had spread had to be removed, and a skin graft from his thigh had to be done to save his disintegrating arm.
Steve was diagnosed with Necrotizing fasciitis, or as it is commonly known, flesh-eating disease.
When he had dug in the garden, he had come into contact with bacteria that “ate” into his skin, thus causing his arm to rot away. “‘My surgeon had only seen three other cases like mine, and he said that one in four die as the mortality is so high,” Steve shared.

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