Woman gets potentially deadly infection from wearing hair-ties on wrist, doctor says



LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A woman has a warning for others after she contracted an infection from wearing hair ties around her wrist.

WLKY reports Audree Kopp noticed a small bump on her wrist. At first she didn't think much of it, but the bump turned red and grew larger.

"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.

Her doctor gave her antibiotics to treat the growth, but nothing seemed to help.

"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 "glittery" 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 told the station. "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's not going to wear hear-ties on her wrists 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 expects Kopp to make a full recovery.