By Gerald Winegrad

On Aug. 5, Patty Peacock was checking crab pots on her pier on Harness Creek just as she has every summer day for decades. I have done the same at my pier just north of hers on Oyster Creek. Shaking the pot, she nicked the underside of her right arm. Bleeding, she washed the tiny cut with soap and water and then applied peroxide.

The next morning the wound was much worse and badly swollen. Her doctor sent her to the Anne Arundel Medical Center emergency room. Patty was admitted to the hospital and began receiving intravenous heavy-duty antibiotics. The surgeons and infectious disease doctors determined that as her flesh was necrotizing from the infection, she needed immediate surgery to remove damaged skin and tissue.

After a harried recovery night with various heart and lung scares, she was sent to the intensive care unit. Sent to a regular room, eventually the wound was draining well and she was tolerating oral antibiotics so she was released after six days. Patty is still recovering with twice weekly home health care visits for wound treatment and monitoring of her vitals. She was told healing would take a year.

Had she not gotten to the ER so quickly and been put on antibiotics, she may have lost her arm and perhaps even her life from what she terms this “necrotizing, flesh eating monster.” She no longer handles her crab pots but helps her husband who has lived on the property all of his 75 years. They now wear gloves as I do.

Sadly, I was already aware that such life and limb threatening infections were not rare. I knew Bernie Voith, a kindly retired gentleman who lived on Plum Creek off the Severn River in Arden on the Severn. Bernie was swimming with his grandson during his annual Fourth of July family reunion in 2005. He had been cleaning a plastic deck chair three days earlier when he got a small cut on his right calf from scraping against the chair.

After swimming, he noticed some pain from the small wound, applied a disinfectant and a band aid and went to bed later. He awoke early with a searing pain in his calf feeling like someone was sticking needles into the wound, his fingertips turning numb while he was hyperventilating, Taken by ambulance to the emergency room, he had a temperature of 105 and a life-threatening bacterial infection. Bernie’s doctor concluded that “he was basically almost on the verge of death by the time he was admitted to the hospital … All system failure was where he was headed.”

Bernie spent two weeks in the hospital getting intravenous antibiotics. And after four months of medical treatment, he eventually recovered despite the flesh eating disease costing him part of his calf.

Bernie showed me his healed emaciated calf while telling me his scary story and said that he felt very fortunate he didn’t lose his leg or life. Like Patty, Bernie wanted to alert others and had written an article in The Capital detailing his brush with death. He wanted me to act to get the word out and to redouble efforts to restore water quality.

Then there was the tragic case of Jay Sadowski. He was an outdoorsman, enjoying fishing and hunting. He grew up in Cape St. Claire, graduated from Severna Park High School, and settled on Kent Island. Jay had been catching white perch on the South River in early September 2013 and got a cut on his hand from handling a perch. Three days later, he was rushed to the Easton hospital as an infection caused a virulent fever with hallucinations. The next day, he was transported by helicopter to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.

Unlike Patty and Bernie, Jay did not seek early treatment and missed early intravenous antibiotics leading to the life threatening flesh eating chronic wasting disease that had dropped to his right leg. It eventually destroyed the ligaments and two-thirds of his calf muscle as his infection ate his leg away from the inside out.

Jay was our car mechanic, the very best and fairest my wife and I ever had. He owned Auto Sport on Lee Street in Annapolis. I learned of his disastrous fishing excursion when I needed a new headlight and his shop was closed. He was unable to work again, frequently in hospitals for medical care, including blood transfusions. Jay had said “at least I still have my leg. People just have to know about this. No one knows about this, and I was born and raised on the water.” He vowed to never fish again in Bay waters.

Looking into Jay’s eyes and hearing his story seared my soul and led to eventual tears as I reflected on my own and our collective failures to do more to restore water quality. I did succeed in having a Baltimore TV station film Jay for a story on his nightmarish experience. Later, I was telling Jay’s story to local leaders fighting Crystal Spring. Documenting the impacts of excess nutrients fueling the organisms causing such infections especially locally from stormwater runoff, I cited Jay’s case. Chuck Ferrar, owner of Bay Ridge Wine & Spirits, was so moved he offered to help fund ads on cable TV.

We met in Chuck’s office with Lee Bonner, a world class videographer I recruited as a volunteer, and a Comcast sales representative. I raised $20,000 all of which went to run thousands of ads on cable TV in 2015 featuring Jay, Bernie, and former County Councilwoman Barbara Samorajczyk. She had a milder arm infection from going in the waters of Lake Ogleton that required months of treatment but her ad was about her dog who contracted a skin infection needing veterinarian care.

To view these 30 second ads and see Jay, Bernie, and Barbara tell their stories and learn how stormwater helps foster infections, see http://mdstormwater.org. Jay died in October 2014 at age 59 leaving a wife and two grown children behind. The official cause of his death was leukemia.

Many other cases of human and dog infections from water contact have been brought to my attention. Most of the cases were much milder than what Patty, Bernie and Jay experienced, including Barbara. Be assured, such infections are not isolated or rare as the state and counties would have you believe.

Pathogens proliferate from warming waters caused by excess nutrients that fuel algal growth and feeds these toxins. There is no question that such infections are underreported as confirmed by the best toxicologists who advised me that our Maryland state and local governments as well as those nationally and globally suppress this bad news as it would harm tourism, water-related recreation, and the fishing industry. Elected officials also would politically suffer from the knowledge of their lack of action to greatly reduce the nutrient loading and flow of contaminants leading to these diseases.

Many other cases of human and dog infections from water contact have been brought to my attention. Most of the cases were much milder than what Patty, Bernie and Jay experienced. Be assured, such infections are not isolated or rare as the state and counties would have you believe. But when is the last tof such life threatening infections from water contact or heard of the presence of flesh eating bacteria in county waters?

I have long abstained from detailing these inconvenient truths for fear of keeping people, especially our children and grandchildren, from enjoying swimming, fishing, crabbing in our wondrous but impaired Chesapeake Bay as I have done all of my life. Patty Peacock and I agree: we want our progeny to continue to do so but only if they do not have any cuts or sores. And, should any hint of an infection arise, immediately seek medical attention.

Next week, my column will follow-up with more details on the workings of Bay pathogens, suppression of such information, and solutions to these problems.

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Gerald Winegrad represented the greater Annapolis area in the Legislature for 16 years, where he championed efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay. He served on the tri-State Chesapeake Bay Commission and taught graduate courses in bay restoration and wildlife management he authored. Contact him at gwwabc@comcast.net.