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Mom survives flesh-eating bacterial infection
Kiyahki Bivins is a mother of three who has had to fight for her life. She said she spent three months in Peidmont Hospital after mysteriously contracting a flesh-eating bacterial infection. Eventually, the sickness caused her to lose limbs and fingers. She tells the FOX 5 Medical Team she's finally ready to move forward with her life.
ATLANTA - Kiyahki Bivins is focused on moving forward with her life after a difficult 17 months.
"If you're not born with a disability, and you go into it, it's a whirlwind," the Atlanta 43-year-old says.
In early June 2022, Bivins was raising three kids, two of them teenagers, and working as a private caregiver. While out with friends one night, she says she started feeling sick.
43-year-old Kiyahki Bivins survived a harrowing bacterial infection that left the Atlanta mother of 3 a quadruple amputee. (FOX 5 Atlanta)
"Just fatigued, tired," Bivins says. "I went home, laid down, told the kids, 'I am not feeling too good.'"
As the hours ticked by, Bivins seemed to be steadily getting worse.
"I got up, and I could barely walk," she says.
While taking a bath, Bivins had noticed what looked like a bruise on the back of her right leg. She wasn't sure when she could have gotten it.
About 36 hours, she realized she was in serious trouble.
"I called my mom about 6 in the morning," Bivins remembers. "I said, 'Mom, I can't move.' I was just weak, I couldn't even get out of the bed."
Rushed by ambulance to Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, Bivins was now critically ill.
43-year-old Kiyahki Bivins survived a harrowing bacterial infection that left the Atlanta mother of 3 a quadruple amputee.
Piedmont foot surgeon and wound specialist Dr. Richard Kaufman was part of the Piedmont surgical team that would spend the next three months fighting to save her.
"She came into the emergency room very sick and septic with an upper leg and lower abdominal abscess," Dr. Kaufman says. "She was a very healthy young person that somehow got a bad infection."
Rushed into emergency surgery to try to stop it from progression, doctors discovered Bivins had contracted a Group B Strep infection.
Yet, no one knows how the bacterium got into her body.
Bivins says she had not been swimming in any lakes or rivers, and she does not remember cutting or nicking her skin.
"So, maybe she brushed into something, didn't realize it, got a small nick. Or, maybe she was shaving, got a small nick," Dr. Kaufman says.
Now, she had necrotizing fasciitis, a "flesh-eating" bacterial infection, that was spreading up her leg.
"So, they had to take out a chunk of the back of my right leg, left leg, my arm," she says. "My heart, lungs, kidneys, everything was failing at that point. So, that in that small time span from Friday to Sunday, I was dying, and I didn't even know it."
"Those things really, really get you sick really, really, really fast," Dr. Kaufman says.
43-year-old Kiyahki Bivins survived a harrowing bacterial infection that left the Atlanta mother of 3 a quadruple amputee. (Bivins Family photo)
In the ICU, in a medically-induced coma, Bivins developed blood clots that blocked the blood flow to her hands and lower legs.
"When I woke up, my hands and my feet were gangrened," she says.
Dr. Kaufman says the combination of powerful medications and Bivins' body's reaction to the infection likely caused her to form the clots.
"Unfortunately, I've seen this happen before," Kaufman says. "But, it's kind of like a give or take. You give them these medications that literally save their lives. But as a result, it's a little bit too much for the body to handle."
For weeks, the team worked to restore blood flow to her hands and lower legs.
But by August, Bivins says her surgeon told her they would have to amputate her feet and lower legs.
"I didn't cry," she remembers. "I didn't do anything. I was calm, and I was like, 'Okay, this is what we've got to do.'"
A few weeks later, surgeons removed part of both of her hands.
She still has a thumb on her right hand, but was left-handed before the amputation.
43-year-old Kiyahki Bivins survived a harrowing bacterial infection that left the Atlanta mother of 3 a quadruple amputee.
"I'm still able to maneuver and do things, but it's more me relying on my right hand versus my left hand," she says. "So, it's just a constant reminder when I get up, and I get ready to do things."
It's been 13 months since Bivins came home from Piedmont.
"I'm just learning how to go up and down and stay up," she says.
She has been fitted with prosthetics, but says she is still trying to get her insurance company to cover rehabilitation therapy to learn how to use them.
Without physical and occupational therapy, she says, she is trying to train herself to use her artificial limbs.
"I'll get back to least the 80 to 90%, once I get this therapy under my belt," Bivins says. "Being an amputee won't stop me from doing the things that I used to do."
Bivins says her mother and her children, who are now 24, 18 and 15, have been critical to her recovery.
She is also grateful, she says, for her Piedmont Healthcare team who helped save her life.
Kiyahki Bivins hopes to one day volunteer with new amputees.
"I always wanted to give back, and so telling my story is one part of it, to let people know, whatever it is that you're going through, you can get through it," Bivins says.