He vacationed on a Waveland beach. Now he’s fighting for his life

A Baton Rouge man is fighting for his life in a Bay St. Louis hospital after he contracted a flesh-eating bacteria while on a family vacation last weekend in Mississippi.

Richard Empson, 69, was getting ready to leave Waveland on Monday morning when he told family members he didn’t feel well enough to make it back to Baton Rouge, his sister-in-law, Lonnie Daggett, said Wednesday.

Family members took him to an emergency room Monday morning and by 3 a.m. Tuesday, Empson was in surgery to have part of his leg amputated.

“It was very touch and go,” Daggett said. “The doctors didn’t give much hope.”

Wednesday evening, Empson was still in the intensive-care unit, but was improving, she said. Every visiting hour throughout the day, the family gathers around Empson, a St. Thomas More Catholic Church member, and prays the rosary, she said.

“He’s steadily getting better,” she said. “It’s the Lord healing him.”

Empson’s family is providing the public with updates on his progress in the hospital on YouCaring. They are also asking for donations for medical expenses.

It all happened so quickly, she said, and Empson is still very ill, but there’s more hope than there was at first.

“He’s a strong man and he’s a fighter,” Daggett said.

Although the tests for what type of bacteria infected Empson weren’t back yet Wednesday afternoon, Daggett said symptoms led doctors to believe it is a “flesh-eating” bacteria.

Vibrio vulnificus lives in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and other warm ocean waters around the country. The bacteria gets into the body, and sometimes bloodstream, as happened in this case, and can produce a toxin that destroys tissue, giving rise to the term “flesh-eating bacteria.”

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This story was originally published June 30, 2016 at 1:32 PM with the headline "He vacationed on a Waveland beach. Now he’s fighting for his life."