Lufkin Boy Gets Flesh-Eating Staph Infection After Swimming in Lake Sam Rayburn
A 3-year old boy was misdiagnosed at first, but a doctor near Houston finally figured out the red splotches on his skin were the result of a flesh-eating staph infection. He swam with his family at Lake Sam Rayburn at the end of July.
Layne Custer's aunt told the Beaumont Enterprise that he developed red patches on his skin after swimming at Lake Sam Rayburn July 25th. Layne and his family spent time at Cassels-Boykin County Park in Zavalla that day, and Layne's symptoms popped up not long after that.
At first, the bleeding sores were chalked up to pityriasis rosea, and that's a lesional skin rash which is usually benign. But Layne's sores got worse and not better, and Layne's mom kept seeking treatment and took him to another doctor near Houston, and that's when Layne was ultimately diagnosed with the flesh-eating staph. Never doubt a mother's intuition! It's a sixth sense, and it turned out to be key in this story.
The Centers for Disease Control says symptoms of a staph infection like Layne's include swelling, redness, a painful rash, fever and lost tissue. The CDC also says the bacterial infection is not usually spread from person to person, but it can also cause a fever and chills in the person that it attacks.
Now, the good news! Layne is getting treatment and doctors will be watching him until the infection goes away. But at least he's not in the hospital, and it sounds like he will recover and be just fine down the road.
He'll be thanking his mom, Amber, someday for going with her gut on this and for refusing to believe that this was just an ordinary skin rash. And he might become a big fan of second opinions too.