Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me is always
Speaker 1: this Charles W. Chuck and Bryant. Uh. He's given me
Speaker 1: the A O K symbols, So we're all set to go.
Speaker 1: Let me have a bowlful of dinosaurs in front of us.
Speaker 1: Pants are off? Pants are off? Mike's are on? Yes,
Speaker 1: that should be our motto, all of them should be.
Speaker 1: That's just great on a T shirt. But um, the
Speaker 1: the all of our open wounds have been treated according
Speaker 1: to the stuff by step process included in this article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you read that sidebar? It's gruesome. Yeah, And you
Speaker 1: know what this is like. This kind of thing can
Speaker 1: strike fear into you when it's in the news, which
Speaker 1: it has been lately in Georgia and nationwide. But um,
Speaker 1: it's rare and we can't say that enough true, So
Speaker 1: don't freak out and don't start slathering yourself with antibacterial
Speaker 1: gel and um. To the writer's credit, it is pointed
Speaker 1: out in this article it's like five cases of this
Speaker 1: a year worldwide, right, I didn't get that either way
Speaker 1: still even in the US now and like maybe and Dora,
Speaker 1: that'd be huge yea. Um, but chuck, after researching this
Speaker 1: plushaming bacteria scares out of you exactly. Yeah, we can't
Speaker 1: beep any longer. It's sad you just did. Man, you
Speaker 1: just found a work around said beep. So that's not
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, it's it's pretty scary because it's
Speaker 1: um silent and it can the silent killer, it can
Speaker 1: creep up on you. And in the case of Amy Copelan,
Speaker 1: who will get too sadly like she was going to
Speaker 1: the hospital for three days before they diagnosed it and
Speaker 1: by that time it was too late, too too late,
Speaker 1: because she survived obviously. But yeah, people, I was reading
Speaker 1: an article about her and she's just like tough as nails.
Speaker 1: They said, like, we're gonna have to amputate your leg,
Speaker 1: and she said, like, let's do this. That's what she said.
Speaker 1: She couldn't even talk. She mouthed it far braver than me.
Speaker 1: I would have been, like, let's end this, right example,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't plug me right. Yeah, I heard now that
Speaker 1: she's up in about the first thing she did was
Speaker 1: take like a half gallon shot of Scotch and punch
Speaker 1: out at doctor just for fun. Alright, so we'll get
Speaker 1: to her tragic but inspiring story, okay, um, I was
Speaker 1: going to use her as an intro. Go ahead, then,
Speaker 1: all right, so I get to it right now, Amy Copeland.
Speaker 1: She's Um twenty four. She's a Georgia lady, um, and
Speaker 1: she was on a zip line at a friend's house
Speaker 1: and fell off. I don't know if the zip line
Speaker 1: broke or if she like go or whatever, but it
Speaker 1: was it was a malfunction. It wasn't. It was over
Speaker 1: like a raveni creak over some brackish water. And in
Speaker 1: brackish water, actually in all fresh water, there is a
Speaker 1: bacteria called aromonous hydrophilia or a hydrophilia, and it's everywhere. Normally,
Speaker 1: if you ingest a little bit of this, you it's
Speaker 1: through swallow water and it gives you the poops. That's it.
Speaker 1: The reason why just diarrhea is because you have whole
Speaker 1: colonies of bacteria and antibodies in your stomach that are
Speaker 1: designed specifically to take on a hydrophilia and put smack
Speaker 1: down on it. It's part of your immune system, right, thankfully.
Speaker 1: The thing is with Amy Copeland, she had a gash
Speaker 1: in her leg from when she fell and the bacteria
Speaker 1: got in that way, and that is a whole different
Speaker 1: host of problems. Exactly. Your body is not used to
Speaker 1: fending off bacteria through wounds, and there are certain types
Speaker 1: of bacteria which are generally known as flesh eating bacteria
Speaker 1: that basically mounts the largest, most vicious, virulent campaign of
Speaker 1: any bacteria around in your human body. This is what
Speaker 1: I didn't quite get though, because you did this part
Speaker 1: as additional research, which I appreciate, but I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 1: Is it a dummy attack is going on? You want
Speaker 1: to get into this? This is how flush eating bacteria.
Speaker 1: I mean, we might as well go ahead and tackle
Speaker 1: this and then we'll finish up Amy story then get
Speaker 1: into it. Okay, So um, what happens? What happens? This
Speaker 1: the bacteria which is again a a hydrophilia. It's everywhere
Speaker 1: and where our bodies are used to it strep the
Speaker 1: same group a strep. Yeah, that's what gives a strep throat.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere of people are carriers, right, These things are
Speaker 1: everywhere and normally when they get into our body through
Speaker 1: normal channels. Our body knows how to ward it off.
Speaker 1: When they come in through a wound, you have potentially
Speaker 1: big trouble. Um and these bacteria are capable of producing
Speaker 1: um toxins. There's entero toxins, which are cytotoxins, meaning like
Speaker 1: they directly go and like kill cells, they like weaken
Speaker 1: the membrane or something like that. So um they can
Speaker 1: go and attack tissues. And then another thing that they
Speaker 1: might express genetically is um exotoxins. Right, these are the
Speaker 1: ones where if you if you have a bacteria that
Speaker 1: expresses exotoxins, No that I thought that prompts the immune response.
Speaker 1: It does. The problem is that these bacteria are are
Speaker 1: prompts are setting off almost it seems like purposefully an
Speaker 1: immune response from your T cells, but it's too big
Speaker 1: and this huge response comes about and it's like this big, lumbering,
Speaker 1: clumsy response from your T cells. So your T cells
Speaker 1: are going haywire because this basically dummy attack has been
Speaker 1: launched by this bacteria to this rack the T cells.
Speaker 1: So this is what I don't get. Are they are
Speaker 1: the T cells attacking the wrong thing. The T cells
Speaker 1: aren't attacking anything. The T cells going on high alert signal,
Speaker 1: the production of cytokines, which are like signals. They're like
Speaker 1: triggers like histamines are. They're an immune response trigger. Cytokines
Speaker 1: are the cytokines In turn, UM overproduced or over excite
Speaker 1: macrophages and those things go and like eat cell detritus
Speaker 1: or detritus. Actually listen to the pronunciation actually detritus okay,
Speaker 1: so eats cell detritus. So they're going, hey wire and
Speaker 1: then um, last, but not least, they promote the release
Speaker 1: of free radicals, which normally go and target bacteria. But
Speaker 1: in this huge undirected immune response, bacteria has purposefully triggered UM.
Speaker 1: The free radicals are attacking all this tissue. So you
Speaker 1: have cytotoxic um in taro talk sense that the bacteria
Speaker 1: is producing directly, and then it's also indirectly affecting this
Speaker 1: healthy tissue by promoting the release of free radicals. It
Speaker 1: does seem purposeful. It very much like it sits around
Speaker 1: and reads the art of war and decides, this is
Speaker 1: how I'm going to take you down exactly, and it
Speaker 1: works like a charm. So you have your tissue that's
Speaker 1: being destroyed, right yeah, which is where you get the
Speaker 1: term necrotizing faciitis, which is the correct term for um
Speaker 1: flash eating bacteria. That's right, and um you it also
Speaker 1: promotes something called toxic shock syndrome. Is that when your
Speaker 1: organs starts shutting down. That's part of it. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well that makes sense. And that's scary. And
Speaker 1: the scariest part of all this is that it starts
Speaker 1: out by something really tiny, like it can be a
Speaker 1: pin prick of an open wound. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be some big gash on your leg. And it starts
Speaker 1: out of something small and turns into something big, which
Speaker 1: is really scary. And you know, if you if you
Speaker 1: have a cut on your hand, on your leg, and
Speaker 1: you actually if even if you haven't been in any
Speaker 1: kind of brackish water, if you just if it starts
Speaker 1: to hurt a lot worse than you think it should,
Speaker 1: then it's probably not one of the five cases, but
Speaker 1: you should probably start looking into it. Well, what was
Speaker 1: surprising to me was it doesn't even have to be
Speaker 1: a cut, man, it could be an abrasion, a bruise.
Speaker 1: How could a bruise I don't get that. I I
Speaker 1: don't know if your skin is thinned out at that
Speaker 1: site really like so thin it and just get through
Speaker 1: the outer dermots maybe, um, but yeah you can, And
Speaker 1: it doesn't just have to be like you said, brackish water.
Speaker 1: Like if you have a cut an open wound on
Speaker 1: your finger and you're around somebody with strep throat, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could conceivably. All the stuff is in place for
Speaker 1: you to to contract necrotizing fasciitists and it can go
Speaker 1: person to person for sure, but without an open wound,
Speaker 1: it's pretty unlikely, right, Like that's how they get in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they eat the fat that the tissue, and then
Speaker 1: they start to consume your organs. Right, And the reason
Speaker 1: the flesh eating bacteria is clinically the clinical term is
Speaker 1: necrotizing fasciitists, which means the killing of fascia. Fascia is
Speaker 1: like this membrane that access connecting tissue between your skin
Speaker 1: and fatty layer and your muscles and joints and tendons
Speaker 1: and ligaments and bones and organs, and it's this uninterrupted
Speaker 1: membrane that covers your entire body beneath your skin. It's like, um,
Speaker 1: one of those what are they called, the one guy
Speaker 1: sent it to us. We have a green screen one.
Speaker 1: Oh the root suit, Yeah, the body suit. It's like
Speaker 1: a root suit, but it's been between your skin and
Speaker 1: your muscles. This is where this infection takes place. And
Speaker 1: since it's uninterrupted, it can go everywhere. It's just basically
Speaker 1: chugs along and separates your skin from your muscles by
Speaker 1: killing all the tissue around it. Well, and the other
Speaker 1: scary part is it's really really really fast. Like this
Speaker 1: football player from the University of Tulsa died in a week. Uh.
Speaker 1: Big healthy tight end, you know, like you don't have
Speaker 1: to be weak, and you don't have to be old
Speaker 1: or a child like you can attack anyone that gets
Speaker 1: it and take you out pretty quickly. Yeah. Uh and
Speaker 1: and just a matter of days, like you said, he
Speaker 1: can go from a pin prick to you know, you
Speaker 1: just lost your leg. Yeah, well, which is what happened
Speaker 1: with Amy Copeland. I mean, it's a miracle that she's
Speaker 1: alive right now, but she ended up having her left
Speaker 1: leg completely amputated, her right foot, both of her hands,
Speaker 1: and part of her torso. And she got out of
Speaker 1: the hospital and like I mean, it took a while,
Speaker 1: but then I think two or three days later she
Speaker 1: was already had taught herself about to eat. This company
Speaker 1: has thrown in to build like a thirty addition to
Speaker 1: our home for like rehabilitation stuff, and uh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Like her, her spirit, her dad has been
Speaker 1: um posting like crazy on like Facebook and on her
Speaker 1: website they started. And she's a bad man, majamma, way
Speaker 1: better than me. She's tough, very inspiring. Um, so wouldn't
Speaker 1: let's say if it's also crazy, Chuck, It's not just her.
Speaker 1: There was another dude from Cartersville, Georgia, who had another
Speaker 1: necrotizing fasciitis case, and they were actually in the rooms
Speaker 1: next to one another at one while there at I
Speaker 1: think a burn center in Augusta. Was it because this
Speaker 1: place is like one of the one of the few
Speaker 1: places in Georgia that like knows what they're doing with
Speaker 1: necrotizing fasciitists. Um, and so you know, how do you
Speaker 1: treat this thing? Well, the first thing you do once
Speaker 1: it's diagnosed is like huge, huge, heavy doses of antibiotics
Speaker 1: to obviously to try and kill it. But like we're
Speaker 1: not talking like Papa pill every six hours, no, like
Speaker 1: cons then tripped just basically flooding your body with it
Speaker 1: um and immunoglobin globe and immunoglobe, and Jerry thought that
Speaker 1: was funny. Yeah, I heard. Uh. So they want to
Speaker 1: remove like any of the dying flesh and try and
Speaker 1: try and isolate it and remove the bad parts, which
Speaker 1: is what they were doing with her, and it just
Speaker 1: spread so quickly. You know, they were like fighting a
Speaker 1: really uphill battle in her case. I read a case study.
Speaker 1: Have you seen any pictures of this stuff? Um? No,
Speaker 1: m hm. So I wrote a case study of this
Speaker 1: woman who came in and she had it in her
Speaker 1: arm and um, you could just first of all, her
Speaker 1: arms swollen. It was like cabbage patch kid's army. But
Speaker 1: then there's like splotches of like purple splotches of black,
Speaker 1: and then um, what's called desquamation, where like the top
Speaker 1: layer of skin is just peeling off. And all of
Speaker 1: this had happened to her like over the course of
Speaker 1: hours and as they were treating it. One of the
Speaker 1: things that they'll do before amputation is called the bride
Speaker 1: mint where basically they take the the limb that's infected
Speaker 1: or the area that's infected and they just scrape the tissue.
Speaker 1: I read about that, Um, I saw a picture of it.
Speaker 1: It's horrific. Yeah, I didn't look at the pictures. Um.
Speaker 1: And then after that they have to treat it with
Speaker 1: skin grafts, after after it's been after they got all
Speaker 1: of it, hopefully, if they that's what she did on
Speaker 1: her torso yeah, okay. And if they can't get it,
Speaker 1: then they amputate. Yeah, it's a pretty serious condition. Okay.
Speaker 1: So what the lookout for. We said, if you have
Speaker 1: like a a smallish wound that's like disproportionately painful, you
Speaker 1: should go on high alert. If it becomes like swollen
Speaker 1: and red and hot, that's a really bad sign. If
Speaker 1: you get typical things you might associate with bacteria and
Speaker 1: back to your own infection, like diarrhea and fever and chills,
Speaker 1: nausea and vomiting, that's a really bad time too, especially
Speaker 1: if you have just a small cut on your arm,
Speaker 1: So that nausea, vomiting, all that stuff could be the
Speaker 1: result of UM, the infection. It could also be the
Speaker 1: infection leading to toxic shock syndrome, which in and of
Speaker 1: itself is pretty interesting. Apparently we've only known about that
Speaker 1: since nineteen Yeah, Um, do you remember like associating it
Speaker 1: with tampons. No. Well, when it first came out, like
Speaker 1: almost all the case studies of this toxic shock syndrome,
Speaker 1: which is like basically your organ multi organ failure, which
Speaker 1: is three or more UM, lowered blood pressure, all this
Speaker 1: other stuff. Um, all of the cases were of people
Speaker 1: who are using like high absorbency tampons. They were women.
Speaker 1: Then they started to look more and more and they
Speaker 1: realized that that didn't hold true when you looked at
Speaker 1: more of the case studies are a lot of men
Speaker 1: and everything. And now they realize that it's the result
Speaker 1: of an infection. So like the lower blood pressure is
Speaker 1: like your body mounting this huge immune to ends and um,
Speaker 1: so histamines are released, so your blood vessels dilate, so
Speaker 1: your blood pressure decreases to a really dangerous level. It's
Speaker 1: basically your body having this enormous allergic reaction to an infection.
Speaker 1: And it had nothing to do with tampons. No, it did.
Speaker 1: It still did, but they thought it was just tampons
Speaker 1: that triggered toxic shock. Yeah. Even still there's like warnings
Speaker 1: on boxes. I think that like toxic shock syndrome warning. Jeez,
Speaker 1: that's pretty scary. I had older sisters. I did too,
Speaker 1: but I didn't get in her business. UM. So in
Speaker 1: the first twenty four hours, you know you're gonna feel
Speaker 1: these pains. UM the second I'm sorry, three to four
Speaker 1: days in, UM, there's gonna be some swelling, and that's
Speaker 1: when you might get this purply rash or like blisters
Speaker 1: that are filled with a dark fluid. That's not a
Speaker 1: good sign at all. And UM, your skin even at
Speaker 1: that point, even three to four days in might start
Speaker 1: to flake off and turn white or dark, and that
Speaker 1: is definitely a bad sign. That's the disquamation. UM. Then
Speaker 1: four to five days in, that's when the toxic shock happens.
Speaker 1: And you're pretty lucky if you haven't been treated at
Speaker 1: this point to to make it out alive. All right,
Speaker 1: toxic shock alone of cases are fatal with UM flesh
Speaker 1: eating bacteria. Overall, the thirty to forty I saw is
Speaker 1: the lowest of cases. So should we talk about wound care? Sure,
Speaker 1: I've never cleaned a wound like this, Well, then you
Speaker 1: haven't been cleaning your wounds correctly. This is one of
Speaker 1: the ways to prevent flesh eating bacteria. That's right. You
Speaker 1: want to flesh your wound with cold water initially, no soap,
Speaker 1: and in fact, you don't even want to get soap
Speaker 1: into the wound. Apparently you want to clean around it
Speaker 1: with with soap and the cloth and then get some
Speaker 1: alcohol and put it on your tweezers. Use the tweezers
Speaker 1: to clean out any gunk that's in there in the
Speaker 1: woon site. Yeah, I've never stuck tweezers in one of
Speaker 1: my cuts ever. Well, that means you didn't have anything
Speaker 1: in there, or you didn't you didn't know it. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I was like, I'm not putting tweezers in there. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you want to apply a bandage if it's a
Speaker 1: place that can be exposed to dirt. And they say
Speaker 1: to ask a doctor whether or not to bandage, because
Speaker 1: sometimes wounds are better unbandaged and heal quicker. Sometimes they're
Speaker 1: better bandaged. And then the old antibodyquintment we'll always do
Speaker 1: you right, don't forget that. Well, yeah, I almost always
Speaker 1: put a band aid on. I've never had a wound
Speaker 1: where I'm like, well, I probably shouldn't put a band aid.
Speaker 1: Symbolic band aid. Um, what else you got? I've got
Speaker 1: some other stuff like risk factors, Um, you can be
Speaker 1: totally healthy. Just from the badness of Amy Copeland, I
Speaker 1: assume she's probably a healthy person. Yeah. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people typically are healthy. UM. So you can
Speaker 1: still come down with flashing in bacteria necrotizing fascitists as
Speaker 1: a healthy person. Um. But there are some risk factors
Speaker 1: that that would put you in the higher likelihood camp. Um.
Speaker 1: If you've had an infection recently, especially with a rash
Speaker 1: like chicken pox. That's one. Cuts, abrasions, those are big ones. UM.
Speaker 1: Steroid use. You don't want to be using steroids anyway,
Speaker 1: but even if they were prescribed and you have a cut,
Speaker 1: I think steroid um steroids prevent cuts from healing is fast.
Speaker 1: So I think those two combined make you at a
Speaker 1: higher risk if your immune system is lower. Sure you've
Speaker 1: been sick, yeah, Uh, diabetes is a big one. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then if you are a black tar heroine user.
Speaker 1: There have been outbreaks of um necrotizing fascitists among heroin
Speaker 1: user before. There was one in the late nineties in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and black tar in particular, Uh, set you
Speaker 1: up for it because it's like this lower purity heroine
Speaker 1: that's gummy, it's gummi er than regular heroin, so it
Speaker 1: collapses your veins like almost immediately. So people who shoot
Speaker 1: black tar heroin do what's called skin popping, where they
Speaker 1: shoot it just under the skin or into their muscles um.
Speaker 1: And then because it's not the least bit refined, that's
Speaker 1: why it's gummy um. There's often impurities, and sometimes some
Speaker 1: of those impurities are Claustralia, which is a kind of
Speaker 1: bacteria that can be a flesh eating bacteria. So basically,
Speaker 1: if you're shooting black tar heroin, you're running the risk
Speaker 1: of directly injecting flesh eating bacteria. And there's people who
Speaker 1: have lost arms, shoulders, ribs two flesh eating bacteria by
Speaker 1: shooting black tar heroin. I think the stuff you should
Speaker 1: know advice is to not do heroin. Let's just go
Speaker 1: ahead and just throw that out there. I could get
Speaker 1: behind that. You're avoiding a whole host of problems if
Speaker 1: you don't do heroin the age. So what else can
Speaker 1: you do to prevent it? We'll keep the wounds clean,
Speaker 1: wash your hands a lot, and that means warm water
Speaker 1: and soap and like fifteen to twenty seconds of good scrubbing,
Speaker 1: like you're going into surgery, get between the fingers, dry
Speaker 1: it off really well. And then after you dry it off,
Speaker 1: don't go and put your hand back on the faucet
Speaker 1: to turn it off in a public bathroom or even
Speaker 1: your own bathroom, although I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: do that in my own home. No, I think your
Speaker 1: own homes, Okay. I feel like there should be some
Speaker 1: sort of I mean, it could lead to a resident superbugs,
Speaker 1: but we already faced tho, so what do we have
Speaker 1: to loose? But I feel like there should be more
Speaker 1: um cleaning products handy in like public bathrooms. Well there
Speaker 1: are increasingly you see those little hand sanitizer machines. I mean,
Speaker 1: like here's a bottle of like bleach water and just
Speaker 1: go ahead and spray that toilet seat or well. I'm
Speaker 1: not like a Hour Hughes type, but I definitely after
Speaker 1: I wash my hands in the bathroom in public, like,
Speaker 1: I don't put my hand on the door handle or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Always try and muscle my way out
Speaker 1: or put a paper twel between me and the thing.
Speaker 1: I'm extremely conscious of that too, especially at the gym. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been more conscious about it, which pops up with
Speaker 1: your character in an episode in our TV show that's
Speaker 1: coming out. That's right, a little uh teaser, Yeah, big
Speaker 1: teaser right there. That's true. You got anything else? Uh? No?
Speaker 1: I mean Amy Copeland's story has been prominent lately obviously,
Speaker 1: and they are accepting donations, and I think we would
Speaker 1: be remiss if we didn't announce that. Um, she spells
Speaker 1: her name a I M E. So it's a I
Speaker 1: M E E c O p E l A n
Speaker 1: d dot com slash donations and just go to the
Speaker 1: website anyway, and just her stories on there and her
Speaker 1: progress is on there, and it's uh both frightening and
Speaker 1: inspiring in her case. So uh, it's definitely I think
Speaker 1: that triggered our desire to do this, right or did
Speaker 1: it well? Yeah, I mean just that. Not only that,
Speaker 1: but it seemed that, uh, nobody really had a good
Speaker 1: idea of um, what flesh eating bacteria does. Loudly local
Speaker 1: news reports yeah, and I mean not even local, like
Speaker 1: the national stuff too, is like, you know, um, really misinformed.
Speaker 1: Like they're like each through your tissue. It doesn't eat
Speaker 1: through your tissue. No nobody dug into how it really works.
Speaker 1: It's very frustrating, you know why, because it's way easier
Speaker 1: just to scare people with things with non facts, right,
Speaker 1: But this is one of the ones where it was
Speaker 1: like the more I looked into it, the more scared
Speaker 1: I became. Even people are lazy. Um oh, I got
Speaker 1: a little more alright at more so Like. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until nine two that somebody used the term neckartizing fasciitists
Speaker 1: and we really started to understand that it was bacteria
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um. But the we knew about it since
Speaker 1: the Civil War. Wow, that's crazy what they call it
Speaker 1: though in the Civil War. Uh well, they used to
Speaker 1: name it, according to the doctor who reported it um
Speaker 1: so like. And it was also based on the area
Speaker 1: of the body that was infected. So like if you
Speaker 1: had furniers or Fournier's gang green, it meant that you
Speaker 1: had flesh eating bacteria around your genitals. If you had ludwigs,
Speaker 1: um angina meant your head, flesh eating bacteria around your
Speaker 1: face or mouth or jaw. Yeah. And then they figured
Speaker 1: out like, oh wait, we should classify by the kind
Speaker 1: of bacteria and that these are not separate things like
Speaker 1: this is all the same thing. These people have had
Speaker 1: like a cut around there that this got into boy,
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble back then too. If you're in
Speaker 1: big trouble now, imagine back then pretty scary. Well. The
Speaker 1: first guy to described as a Confederate Civil War surgeon
Speaker 1: named Joseph Joe, and I'm sure he was like, I
Speaker 1: can't do anything for you, man, right, he retired to
Speaker 1: the country. So that's it. Flesh eating bacteria. UM. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about it, you can type
Speaker 1: that in flesh hyphen eating bacteria uh into the search
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff works dot com and that will
Speaker 1: bring up listener mail. I am going to call this uh.
Speaker 1: We love the Irish as always, Uh, Josh and Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry. Just a short note from an old geezer
Speaker 1: UH living in Limerick in Ireland, who is one of
Speaker 1: your most devoted bands for the last number of years.
Speaker 1: When walking my dogs every Sunday on the mountains of
Speaker 1: Oreland and alpine areas, occasionally I'm listening to stuff you
Speaker 1: should know in the iPod. My biggest problem is that
Speaker 1: I've not been able to source a set of earphones
Speaker 1: that will suit my border collies, who was cool, intelligent
Speaker 1: piece would easily tune into you. Laid back Southern dudes,
Speaker 1: so he wants his dogs to listen. That's nice. I
Speaker 1: thoroughly enjoyed the show, in particular You're Easy symbiotic style,
Speaker 1: and I've recommended it wildly. In particular, I enjoyed the
Speaker 1: shrunken head show because I used to have one. How
Speaker 1: you might ask, My sister worked in Columbia in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and brought me home a present of
Speaker 1: a shrunken head. It looked very real, so the first
Speaker 1: question I asked was is it real? No, it's not,
Speaker 1: she said, but added, if you really want a genuine head,
Speaker 1: I'll bring one next time. Needless to say, I decline,
Speaker 1: which was a big mistaken. The original head is still
Speaker 1: hanging behind the bar of a pub on the west
Speaker 1: coast of uh CEO dot Claire. Is that county County Claire?
Speaker 1: All right, that's what they do in Ireland, CEO and
Speaker 1: that is from Mike keys uh. And then Judy and
Speaker 1: Glenn are the dogs. He named his dogs Judy and
Speaker 1: Glenn ver I know. And he's just marching around Ireland.
Speaker 1: Let's and THENTO us also with the shrunken head around
Speaker 1: his neck. I guess we'll keep marching Glenn and Judy
Speaker 1: and Mike is the human Mike human. Thank you very
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