LOUISVILLE, Kentucky -- A bad infection on one woman's arm was caused by a glittery hair-tie she kept wrapped around her wrist, doctors in Kentucky said. Audree Kopp went to the doctor when the red bump on her arm kept getting bigger and bigger.
"I didn't believe it at first, I thought that it was a spider bite, or something else, not from wearing hair-ties," Kopp said about her diagnosis.
When doctor-prescribed antibiotics did not reduce the swelling, Kopp went to the emergency room.
"They said I needed surgery and thank God I caught it in time or I could have had sepsis," she said.
Dr. Amit Gupta said bacteria from Kopp's hair-tie likely got under her skin through her pores and hair follicles and caused the infection.
"She had a large abscess on the back of her wrist. So I basically made an incision and drained the puss all the way down to the layers of the skin," Dr. Gupta said. "Be careful. You can't put all these hair-ties around the wrist particularly because it can cause problems with the skin, it can cause infection."
Kopp said she would not wear hear-ties on her wrist anymore.
"It could have been a whole different ballgame, once it gets into your bloodstream, people have been known to go into a coma, your body shuts down it could have been way worse," she said.
The doctor predicts Kopp will make a full recovery.
