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Friday, May 18, 2012 2:45 PM UTC

Georgia woman learns toll of flesh-eating bacteria

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Topics: From the Wires,

ATLANTA (AP) — A young Georgia woman fighting a flesh-eating bacteria has learned she will lose her hands and remaining foot, and responded by saying “Let’s do this.”

Her father recounted the conversation in an update on his Facebook page Friday. Andy Copeland wrote about the difficult talk he had a day earlier with his daughter Aimee. The 24-year-old woman contracted the bacteria after an accident.

She “shed no tears, she never batted an eyelash. I was crying because I am a proud father of an incredibly courageous young lady,” Andy Copeland wrote.

It was not immediately clear whether the surgeries had already happened.

Copeland suffered a deep gash in her leg after falling May 1 from a homemade zip line over a Georgia river, and the bacteria took hold in the wound.

Copeland said he was finally able to tell his daughter Thursday what had happened since that outing, and how she’s been the focus of an outpouring of love from around the world.

“We told her that the world loved and admired her,” he wrote in Friday’s update. “We explained that she had become a symbol of hope, love and faith.”

He recalled how Aimee’s eyes widened, her jaw dropped.

Then, Copeland took his daughter’s hands and held them up to her face.

“She didn’t draw back in horror. She knew the condition she was in,” he wrote.

He explained that doctors believed her hands were hampering her progress, and they must be removed. Aimee nodded, her father said.

“She smiled and raised her hands up, carefully examining them,” her father wrote.

“She then looked at us. We all understood her next three words. ‘Let’s do this.’

More Jeff Martin.

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