Aimee Copeland was released from Doctors Hospital in Augusta, Georgia. The psychology graduate student at the University of West Georgia will spend the next several weeks at a rehabilitation facility learning to move with the aid of a wheelchair. She has also had multiple skin grafts.
"She's real excited," her father, Andy said.
"She's been seeing those four walls inside that hospital for a long time," Andy was quoted as saying by CNN last week.
"This next step is her opportunity to go (to) the next phase and learn something, be able to rehabilitate and basically relearn her life skills," said her father.
"She needs to be able to develop the autonomy to be able to transfer from her bed to a wheelchair to the shower to the bathroom or anywhere else in the house. And she can do it."
Copeland has gone outside the hospital in a wheelchair at least once -- June 24 -- as her condition has improved, her father said in his blog.
Copeland's ordeal began May 1, when she was riding a makeshift zip line across the Little Tallapoosa River, about 50 miles west of Atlanta. The line snapped, and she fell and received a gash in her left calf that took 22 staples to close.
Later she went to an emergency room. Doctors eventually determined she had necrotizing fasciitis caused by the bacteria Aeromonas hydrophila.
A number of bacteria that are common in the environment but rarely cause serious infections can lead to necrotizing fasciitis. When the bacteria gets into the bloodstream -- such as through a cut -- doctors typically move aggressively to excise even healthy tissue near the infection site in hopes of ensuring none of the dangerous bacteria remain.
The infection attacks and destroys healthy tissue and is fatal about 20 per cent of the time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, estimates that fewer than 250 such cases occur each year in the US, though estimates are imprecise since doctors do not have to report the cases to health authorities.
Copeland has remained positive throughout the ordeal that brought her to the brink of death, her sister, Paige said.
"She's just amazing because she just knows that she's blessed and she is just so happy to be alive," Paige said.
"Aimee, she cherishes life. She relishes life. Everyday is a gift and she always has had that outlook even before her accident," she added.
