After Ordeal, a Day of Joy

Nearly a month after so-called flesh-eating bacteria ravaged the right side of her tiny body, baby Rosa celebrated her first birthday Friday with squeals of delight.

The party at Northridge Hospital Medical Center had the usual balloons, cake, punch and plenty of presents from the doctors and nurses who treated the Oxnard infant as she battled the deadly bacteria. But the greatest gift could not be wrapped.

The baby’s freedom.

Dressed in a red velvet Winnie the Pooh jumper, Rosa Olvera bobbed and giggled, almost oblivious to the miraculous recovery she had made from the rare condition known as necrotizing fasciitis. In the past month, she endured two grueling operations in which skin grafts were taken from her buttocks to cover the gaping wound left by bacteria. At the hospital party and news conference, Rosa showed little sign of her past suffering save for some tender pink skin peeking from under her diaper.

Instead, it was her mother who still felt pain. Overcome with emotion by her daughter’s near-death experience, Rosa Suarez explained what it felt like to be taking her baby home.

As she cradled her child, tears fell.

“It’s incredible to be holding her,” she said, “because remembering her the way she was . . . that she hardly had a chance for survival and knowing that I have her with me now. . . . She’s everything to me.”

Dr. Hooshang Semnani, head of pediatric critical care at Northridge Hospital, said Rosa was close to death when she was admitted July 3 and had been given only a 50% chance of survival. The infection, said Semnani, began under her right arm and spread to her back and the right side of her chest, destroying 20% of her body’s skin.

“She really amazed everybody” by recovering, the doctor said.

The baby first became sick June 29 and was seen by three doctors, including one in Tijuana, before the bacteria was diagnosed during a second visit to Ventura County Medical Center. The state Department of Health Services is reviewing the case to determine whether she received proper care on her initial visit there.

Before the baby and her family returned to their Oxnard home Friday, they stopped at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in the area, where the parents had often given thanks for Rosa’s improvement after visiting her in the hospital.

Later, family members gathered in their garage, eating tortillas, drinking sodas and polishing off what remained of the cranberry birthday cake.

Rosa Suarez held the baby in her arms, as she had for weeks at the hospital between treatments.

“Let’s not talk about hospitals anymore,” said Maria Suarez, the baby’s grandmother. “Let’s talk about being home.”