flesh-eating victimI'm not sure I like where this whole flesh-eating trend is going. If it's not zombies, it's bacteria: Louise Thompson of South Carolina is officially the fifth person to be diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis in the weeks since 24-year-old Aimee Copeland of Georgia contracted the disease ziplining on a river with friends.

The grandmother doesn't know how she got the infection, but says it started about two months as a pain that felt like "needles against her skin."

By the time she went for surgery, doctors were forced to remove a "football-sized" area of her leg. She was in a coma for five days, but finally stood up for the first time last week and hopes to walk eventually, she says.

So that's good news, at least. But you kind of have to wonder ... who's next? Because even though doctors continue to insist that cases like these are incredibly rare, I feel like the five recent victims would disagree.

And I'm not buying that the cases aren't related in some way, given the fact that each of the patients live in the same general geographic location: Aimee Copeland, Bobby Vaughn, and Paul Bales in Georgia, and Louise Thompson and new mom Lana Kuykendall in South Carolina.

What gives? There's clearly something going on here, even if nobody's sure exactly what it is yet. Diagnoses of 'rare' diseases don't suddenly surge for no reason at all.

Here's hoping we get some answers soon.

Why do you think more people are suddenly being diagnosed with flesh-eating bacteria?


Image via FOX Carolina