Aimee Copeland, the Snellville woman battling a flesh-decaying disease, sat up in a chair for the first time since she was hospitalized, her father said.
Copeland was able to leave her bed Tuesday after her mother, Donna, asked a nurse if it would be possible, her father reported Thursday on a Facebook page dedicated to Aimee.
"Can Aimee sit up in a chair?" Donna Copeland asked her nurse, according to the Facebook post by Andy Copeland.
"If we're going to do it, this is the best possible time. I will call the doctor," the nurse responded, according to Andy Copeland. "This was the best time," he wrote, "because the doctors decided to take Aimee off dialysis for a trial run to see how she responded. She was also off of the ventilator. Although the lines running to her body were many, there were fewer to hassle with than there were thirty-six hours prior.
"When we returned at noon, guess who was out of bed, sitting up in a chair and beaming from ear-to-ear? Actually, it wasn't as much a beam as it was a grimace," Copeland wrote.
He said the goal was for Aimee to remain in the chair for an hour; she made it five hours.
The Snellville native contracted the infection May 1 as she and friends zip-lined along the Little Tallapoosa River near Carrollton. When the homemade zip line broke, she fell to the water and rocks below, cutting her calf on a stone.
The bacteria entered through Copeland's wound, forcing doctors to perform multiple amputations, including removing her left leg at the hip.
-- Staff write Fran Jeffries contributed to this article.
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