“A teenager who decided to get her breasts pierced for her 18th birthday faces reconstructive surgery after a flesh-destroying infection forced doctors to remove her left breast. Stephanie Edington of Crawfordsville remained hospitalized Friday at the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis, where surgeons also removed lymph nodes and infected skin up to her collar bone. Dr. Robert Goulet Jr., a professor at the Indiana University Cancer Center, said the piercing created an entry point for the bacteria, but the procedure likely did not cause the infection itself. Edington is diabetic, which left her susceptible to infection, he said. Doctors diagnosed Edington, who had the piercings on Aug. 29, with necrotizing fasciitis, or gas gangrene — a rare condition that results from rapid bacteria growth and leads to tissue destruction. It is only the third documented case in the world of gas gangrene in the breast area, Goulet told The Paper of Montgomery County. She was in critical condition by the time she arrived at the hospital Oct. 14, Goulet said. ‘By the time she got here, the skin tissue was all pretty much completely dead,’ he said. ‘She was a very sick kid when she got here.’ Edington is on an aggressive antibiotic regimen and has already undergone three surgeries. She faces several more, including eventual breast reconstruction. She said she was eager to be discharged but worries about what awaits her.” — MyWay (US)

The world’s population is almost seven billion. It’s difficult to say how many people have lived and died in “recorded medical history,” but suffice to say that it is a very large number. Poor Ms. Edington is only the third person in recorded history to suffer from gas gangrene, a particularly nasty flesh-wasting bacterial infection, in the breast region. Imagine that — of some ten billion or more people, you’re only the third to get hit with this awful freak anomaly. If you were contemplating buying a lottery ticket, you probably wouldn’t bother if you realized your odds were only about one in three or four billion. And yet here is this poor girl, mutilated by the unlucky mutilating eqivalent of a miracle. Damn.

No doubt this will inspire a flood of muckraking news articles that warn of the dangers of piercings and other body modifications. And it’s true that, if you’re thinking about making yourself more beautiful by means of a wound, it’s always better to use a licensed professional. But all the same, let’s not get hysterical. Ms. Edington is the victim of some serious bad luck. Nothing more than that.

There probably isn’t much you can say to reassure a young woman who has gone from accoutring her breasts to reconstructing them. It’s a cruel fate. But maybe she can interest the film director David Cronenberg in her story. There is something very Cronenbergian about the image of breasts afflicted with a mysterious flesh-wasting ailment. It would be a perfect case for the Institute of Neo-Venereal Diseases, a fabrication of Cronenberg’s early film Crimes of the Future. You can imagine the director imparting a metaphysical element to the affliction, as though the deteriorating chest were a physical incarnation of an inner depravity. It might not provide much consolation to poor Ms. Edington, but a royalty check would assist with the surgery bills.

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