UFC flyweight Maycee Barber is recovering after a nine-day keep within the hospital, and she or he is grateful to be alive.
“The issues that we put our our bodies by way of, it’s no joke, all these items on the bottom [of a fight],” stated Barber, who was hospitalized days after beating Katlyn Cerminara at UFC 299. “I’d have by no means thought that I’d be in a hospital for 9 days feeling like I used to be gonna die.”
Medical doctors nonetheless don’t know what made Barber so sick. They think she could have contracted Streptococcus pyogenes, a critical type of strep throat, and a staph an infection. She additionally contracted pneumonia and her blood strain dropped to harmful ranges.
“I ended up … being on oxygen, having the blood strain monitored, and all the things being monitored always, and being caught with like a bunch of various needles,” she stated. “However we don’t have a definitive reply on what it was. From the second I went into the hospital, they began giving me antibiotics, and giving me stuff to attempt to convey it down or determine it out.
“As they had been doing that, they had been additionally testing, they’re like, ‘We’re giving her this to assist with it, however we’re additionally making an attempt to determine what it’s.’ So that they by no means actually obtained a real reply as to what it was. However the antibiotics that I’m on now are slowly beginning to clear it up. So I’m hopeful that it simply stays gone and stays away, as a result of for a minute there, I wasn’t certain if I used to be going to make it.”
The ordeal began simply three days after UFC 299. Barber noticed a pink spot on her leg “like somebody took a baseball bat to my shin” and commenced to swell quickly. She suffered extreme ache within the limb and contacted workers the UFC Efficiency Institute, who suggested her to go to pressing care.
“It progressed so quick, and I find yourself going to the ER, they usually ran checks, and tried to determine it out, and couldn’t determine it out, after which they had been going to ship me dwelling that night time,” she stated. “I nonetheless had a fairly excessive fever. [My temperature] was like, like 102, 103 [degrees]. I went dwelling, went to mattress, awoke the following day, and I used to be like, 105, 106.
“They introduced me again into the ER and began operating extra checks, after which that progressed right into a nine-day course of, ‘We expect it’s sepsis. We expect it’s staph, we expect it’s MRSA, we expect it’s a blood clot.’ All these various things. They thought it was Strep A – is one other type of strep – after which they had been like, ‘We’re undecided.’”
By day 4 of her hospital keep, Barber’s situation had gotten so unhealthy, she thought it is likely to be deadly.
“I used to be within the mattress, and my mother was staying the night time with me, and for no matter purpose, there was one thing that that they had given me, it was like a painkiller, but it surely was additionally a narcotic that introduced my blood strain down too low after it was already extraordinarily low,” she stated. “I feel that that prefer it was a mix of that, blended with pneumonia and never with the ability to breathe – I legit couldn’t breathe in any respect. So once they had me on the oxygen, and the blood strain was dropping, I simply began crying. I seemed over at my mother, and I simply began crying.
“I didn’t need to inform her that, however I used to be like, ‘I don’t assume I’m going to make it. I genuinely was scared, and I used to be like, ‘Rattling, all of the those that I’m seeing within the hospital proper now is likely to be the final those that I talked to.’ I referred to as my mates, and I used to be like, ‘I don’t know…’ . It was powerful, it was a scary expertise, and I hope that I by no means need to undergo that. But additionally I really feel prefer it’s a testomony to a number of fighters which have needed to undergo one thing related.”
Staph infections and MRSA are rampant in MMA gyms the place fighters grapple and sweat on the mats. A number of fighters have had shut calls that required hospitalization; tiny cuts have led to ugly accidents that required intravenous antibiotics.
In Barber’s case, there was no such harm that led to the an infection. That solely added to the thriller of her physique’s response.
“The antibiotic that I used to be on is for extreme pores and skin remedies,” she stated. “One of many issues that I really feel like was ought to have occurred means sooner was, the docs that that they had engaged on me, they didn’t have solutions. So then that they had to usher in an infectious illness physician from one other hospital. That’s the man that began to essentially have the solutions for us.”
Barber’s power is slowly returning; she performed basketball on Tuesday after taking transient walks to check her power. On the peak of her sickness, she couldn’t stroll upstairs with out shedding her breath.
She isn’t certain whether or not her sickness was current for her struggle with Cerminara, however she suspects it could have sapped her of her aggressiveness within the cage.
“The entire camp was just a little bit powerful, however I felt off within the sense of, I ought to have completed Katlyn,” she stated. “I do know in my coronary heart that I may have completed her. I simply didn’t have that little further bit.”
