Flesh-eating bacteria left untreated: As inmate's body was ravaged, the prison said he was faking. Did he unknowingly expose others?

Doctors and nurses at Gander Hill prison, in Wilmington, never treated Ed Brittingham for the flesh-eating bacteria that scarred his body.

They thought the 47-year-old inmate had a broken arm.

Nearing the end of his 13-year sentence for second-degree burglary, Brittingham was enrolled in a drug treatment program and was allowed to leave the prison for furloughs home and for work release.

The frequent trips outside the wire, it turns out, exposed his wife, friends and the public to the lethal disease that was eating away his shoulder.

Just one cough or sneeze could have spread the infection.

Brittingham first noted an intense pain in his shoulder on a weekend furlough in December 2004. When he returned to prison the following Monday, he reported to sick call, which was managed by First Correctional Medical, a Tucson, Ariz.-based private medical company working in Delaware prisons under contract with the Department of Correction. At sick call, an employee with FCM gave Brittingham a sling, took some blood and scheduled a few tests.

"When the X-rays showed I didn't have any broken bones, they wrote me up for faking," Brittingham said. "I knew it wasn't a broken bone. I told them this. They gave me Motrin, but the pain was pretty awful so I took a double dose. They wrote me up for that, too."

Severe abdominal pain followed. There was blood in his urine.

The medical staff assumed Brittingham was passing a kidney stone. They issued him a strainer and more Motrin.

"I was drinking five gallons of water a day, but I never passed any stone," he recalled. "I kept trying to get to medical, filling out sick call slips."

Brittingham stopped eating. He couldn't hold down food; the pain in his shoulder, stomach and leg were too intense.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 20," Brittingham said.

Necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating bacteria, is a condition caused by strep A bacteria, which is the same bacteria that causes strep throat.

According to a 1996 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an average of 500 to 1,500 cases are reported each year in the United States. Around 20 percent end in death.

The bacteria enters the body through a cut or scrape. It's usually treated with a massive infusion of antibiotics delivered through an IV and removal of the affected tissue. Amputations and skin grafts are common. Most survivors end up horribly scarred if treatment is delayed.

"It's a nationwide problem in prison care," said Dr. Robert Cohen, a prison health care expert who serves as a court-appointed monitor in prisons in four states. "It spreads rapidly in a corrections environment. It doesn't have to if appropriate infection control techniques are followed."

Delaware Department of Correction Commissioner Stan Taylor said recently there were only two cases of the deadly bacteria in his nine facilities. Brittingham was one.

Brittingham said, "They told me if I went to the hospital while on a home furlough, they'd consider it an escape, and I'd get sent back to prison to serve the remainder of my sentence."

The prison staff gave the same warning to his wife, Lee McMillan, she said. "They told me if he had a heart attack and fell to the floor, I wasn't supposed to call 911," she said. "I was supposed to bring him back to the prison."

Weeks passed. The pain became torturous.

In January, Brittingham did the unthinkable. He ended a home furlough on his own and went back to prison early.

The bacteria was eating its way through to the surface of the skin, causing massive red lesions on his leg, foot and shoulder. His face was swollen, and he was burning up with fever. He had difficulty communicating with his wife. It hurt to move, sit or lie in bed.

Rather than heading to the prison infirmary, where his complaints had been ignored, Brittingham went to a prison guard, stripped off his clothes and showed him the lesions.

"Thank God they thought they were blood clots, because they sent me to St. Francis Hospital," he said. "Once I got to the hospital I went blank. I was there for 11 days. I don't remember much."

McMillan spent nearly every hour at her husband's side.

"The infection had taken over his mind," she said. "The necrotizing fasciitis shocks your system, and he went into shock."

St. Francis doctors lanced his shoulder and two spots on his left leg, which had swollen nearly double in size.

"The stuff that poured out looked like thick red paint," McMillan said. "I helped the doctor catch the fluid in an adult diaper. I went through three of them."

The medical staff used a wound vacuum to remove dead tissue.

When Brittingham woke up after 11 days, he looked down at what was left of his shoulder.

"When I saw it, it threw me into shock," he said. "They had to sedate me."

Removal of the infected tissue, skin grafts and painful physical therapy followed.

In late January, Brittingham was discharged from the hospital and transferred back to Gander Hill.

"I spent my first four days without any pain meds, antibiotics, physical therapy or wound care information," he said. "My leg started swelling up again. I thought I was having a reoccurrence. I swear to God I didn't want to go through that again."

Brittingham was eventually given medication and has since been released. He now lives with his wife in New Castle.

The experience changed him physically and mentally.

"I lost 55 pounds," he said. "I went from a size 38 waist to a size 27."

"When he got home, mentally he was a mess," his wife said. "If he got a cut or scrape he'd get panicky."

The couple hasn't filed a lawsuit, but they want the prison staff and First Correctional Medical held accountable.

"These people should be prevented from practicing medicine and from making decisions that affect people's lives," he said.

"What they did to Ed was a crime," McMillan said. "If these prison doctors would have suffered like Ed suffered, it would have stopped."

Brittingham spends his days looking for work. His wife has recently completed a medical transcriptionist course. They spend their free time researching necrotizing fasciitis on the Internet.

"I think about it every day," Brittingham said. "My mind and body are scarred forever."