A vacation in the mountains near Estes Park turned into a fight for survival when Erica Cebzanov developed a rare, life-threatening necrotizing soft tissue infection — commonly known as flesh-eating bacteria — that required two emergency surgeries and nearly a year of recovery that continues today. The 44-year-old, who lives in Pittsburgh, had no scratch or open wound anywhere near the site where the infection took hold, making the sudden, rapid destruction of her tissue all the more alarming to the medical team that treated her.
According to UCHealth Today, Cebzanov first sought help at a UCHealth urgent care clinic in Estes Park after noticing a lump, and providers there sent her for emergency evaluation at UCHealth Estes Valley Medical Center. That facility, a 23-bed critical access hospital that UCHealth acquired in December 2025 to expand rural emergency and surgical access, performed a CT scan of the lump that revealed fluid and trapped air beneath her skin — a signature warning sign of a soft tissue infection racing through the body, as reported by the Estes Park Trail-Gazette.
Doctors at Estes Valley gave Cebzanov antibiotics before paramedics transported her 30 miles to UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, a Level 1 trauma center. Surgeons there operated almost immediately after she arrived, removing dead and infected tissue in what became the first of two emergency surgeries. The facility earned its Level 1 trauma designation from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in July 2022, a milestone that meant northern Colorado patients no longer had to be routed to the Denver metro area for the most severe trauma cases, according to UCHealth.
A Portal Bacteria Could Slip Through Unnoticed
Cebzanov's surgeon, Dr. Christian Dennis, said her hidradenitis suppurativa — a chronic inflammatory skin condition she lives with alongside dystonia, fibromyalgia and pseudogout — may have provided the portal of entry for the bacteria, even without a visible wound. Hidradenitis suppurativa affects an estimated 1% to 3% of the U.S. population and causes recurrent nodules and interconnecting tunnels under the skin that can trap bacteria, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Those hidden tunnels can essentially create a doorway for infection that never shows up as a scratch or cut.
Necrotizing soft tissue infections are rare, striking about four people per 1 million each year, per Dennis, but they are ferociously fast, capable of destroying healthy tissue within hours. Left untreated, the infections can progress to septic shock, multi-organ failure, and death within 24 to 36 hours of the first symptoms, according to UCHealth Today's reporting. Dennis said untreated flesh-eating bacterial infections kill about 30% of patients each year, and the condition tends to hit immunocompromised people, those with poor extremity blood flow, and people with diabetes or alcohol or drug use disorders harder than others.
Six Days In the Hospital, Six Months of Wound Care
Cebzanov spent six days in the hospital after her two emergency surgeries, left with a surgical cavity about five inches long and three inches deep. Her care team relied on a wound vacuum machine to help the site heal, a negative pressure therapy commonly used on deep necrotizing wounds to draw edges together and pull out fluid, per a review published in PMC. Once home in Pittsburgh, she needed six months of home health wound care, during which specialists performed debridement, chemical cauterizations, and collagen treatments, repeatedly cleaning the wound and changing her bandages.
Her recovery was complicated by Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder that causes hypermobile, fragile tissue and joints. The condition's defective collagen synthesis leaves patients with extreme skin fragility and impaired wound healing, according to research published in PMC, which helps explain why a wound of that depth took so long to close. Cebzanov also completed physical therapy for post-infection lymphedema and received iron infusions to combat fatigue during her recovery.
Still Healing a Year Later
A year after the infection, Cebzanov is still recovering. She continues to experience nerve pain at her wound site and in her legs, and now relies on topical creams, waterproof bandages, and occasional oral antibiotics to prevent future infections. She was unable to work because of her health during much of her recovery, though she has long earned a bachelor's and master's degree in journalism, leads an in-person support group for people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and volunteers for animal rescue groups.
Her husband, Tony Cebzanov, a software engineer, has been by her side; the two have been together 21 years and married for 17. Cebzanov also had an earlier staph infection following spinal fusion surgery in 2009, an experience that, combined with last year's ordeal, has shaped how she talks about advocating for her own health. She says the experience taught her to take her health seriously and to speak up for herself with medical providers.
Dennis advised people to pay close attention to any wounds and to clean them properly, especially in outdoor settings where exposure to bacteria is more likely. His warning lands amid a broader national trend: invasive Group A Streptococcus infections, which include necrotizing fasciitis, more than doubled in the U.S. between 2013 and 2022 across ten state surveillance networks, according to a CDC-led study covered by CIDRAP. The CDC had already flagged Colorado as one of the regions seeing a sharp resurgence in severe invasive strep cases starting in late 2022.
Group A Streptococcus, the primary cause of monomicrobial necrotizing fasciitis, causes between 700 and 1,150 cases of necrotizing soft tissue disease in the U.S. each year, with a mortality rate of up to 20% even with prompt treatment, per CDC guidance. A separate 20-year analysis of CDC mortality data found that necrotizing fasciitis deaths rose steadily nationwide before surging roughly 20% annually during 2020 and 2021 and remaining elevated through 2023.
