It was Thanksgiving 2015 when animal lover Anna Giacomi set out to do something she had done hundreds of times as part of her weekly routine: feed her favorite donkey at a local farm.
As the mother of two from Georgia bent down to grab a pear from her bag, the donkey bit her arm and dragged her under the barbed wire fence.
What followed was a savage attack that lasted several minutes, in which she was repeatedly bitten and stomped on, shattering her left arm and hand and fracturing several ribs.
His wounds, though severe, were supposed to heal within months, but a series of medical failures led to Giacomi developing a flesh-eating infection that ravaged one side of his body. Three weeks after the attack, his left arm was amputated above the elbow and his left leg above the knee.
LIFE CHANGING: Anna Giacomi is pictured above with her legal team. She sued the hospital that treated her for over $40 million and won
A CASE THAT BACKS THE TREND: The donkey that attacked her. She said it grabbed her arm and dragged her under the barbed wire fence
Speaking about her injuries, Ms Giacomi told DailyMail.com: ‘I try not to think about it too much… but I rely on people to help me with almost everything (nowadays).
“From getting out of bed, getting dressed, bathing, going to the bathroom, cooking, cleaning, etc. Everything has been affected.”
She added: “I used to go hiking, volunteer at the hospital where all this happened and at the animal shelter. I miss those activities very much.”
Ms Giacomi said she does not blame the donkey for what happened and is even afraid of animals as a result of the infection.
She says she has always loved animals and used to rescue cats and dogs that she found regularly.
She had also been feeding this donkey for the past five years, which sat in a pen on a working farm next to a sign inviting people to feed it apples and pears.
Instead, she puts her life-changing injuries on one of the hospitals that treated her, which she successfully sued for $47 million for past and future pain and suffering.
A jury in Georgia found that the hospital, Union General Hospital, and its lead surgeon, Dr. James Heaton, were negligent for failing to detect clear signs that she had a septic infection.
The retiree now had to move to Miami, Florida, to be close to her son, who helps her with her daily care.
She fears she may never return to her beloved Italy, which she left when she was 10 to go to the United States.
After the attack on November 26, 2015, doctors initially cleaned and treated her wounds, gave her antibiotics and then, when she appeared stable, moved her to a nursing home.
But less than 24 hours after she was moved, nurses reported (according to court documents) that there was a “foul odor” coming from her ankle and a significant amount of fluid coming from it.
The next day they said he now had a green scab forming on his toes.
But staff took no action, and the assigned surgeon, Dr James Heaton (who has now been jailed for operating a “pill factory” at the centre) did not come to see her.
It took nurses more than a week to act on her growing necrotising fasciitis infection (pictured) and finally call a surgeon.
At one point, a surgeon who came into her room where she had been left for days said she smelled like she was rotting like a dead animal on the side of the road.
Three days after her admission, the head nurse made the decision to transfer her back to the hospital, this time to Union General Hospital in Georgia.
Upon admission, nurses observed a “necrotic black area” on the top of his left foot, “the size of a baseball,” as well as “dirty,” “oozing” and “infected” wounds.
But the nurses followed the advice of the hospital’s personal trainer and so-called “wound care specialist”, Mr Ronald Westfall, who said she did not need to see a surgeon.
When a doctor finally saw her, five days after she was admitted, he said her room smelled so bad it resembled the odor of a dead animal that had been sitting on the side of the road. He ordered her transferred back to her first hospital, Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC).
Ms Giacomi remembers little of that time, saying she was “out of it” because of the pain she was in and the drugs they were using.
But he does recall repeatedly expressing concern about his legs and saying he was in constant, unbearable pain.
“I don’t remember the details right now,” he said, “but I know that the general surgeon who eventually helped get me out of the hospital said my room smelled like a dead animal because of my infection.
“I was in bed crying and saying that no one would listen to me.”
Each year, up to 1,200 Americans are diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis infections (or flesh-eating bacterial infections), which spread rapidly and occur when bacteria begin to multiply in the tissue and blood vessels around the joints.
It can arise in hospital settings in vulnerable patients if a wound becomes infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the patient is unable to fight it off.
Ms. Giacomi is pictured above in a 2017 interview she did after the attack.
In this condition, rapid intervention is always necessary to control the infection before it progresses.
About 22 percent of cases lead to amputations and in rare cases they can also be fatal.
But she sees her case as a warning of what can happen in the hospital and a warning to others that the hospital is not always safe.
“I want people to be aware that this happened,” she said, “that it was an infection that got out of control through no fault of my own.”
He settled out of court with the commercial farm that owned the donkey for an undisclosed amount.
And this month he won his medical malpractice case against Union General Hospital, with a jury awarding him $47 million for past and future pain and suffering.
The case is likely to go to appeal because of the insurance company, but Ms. Giacomi remains hopeful that justice will be done.
“I am very grateful to the jury who heard my case and spoke the truth,” she said.
“I feel vindicated, but I am also disappointed by the prospect of an appeal and how the defense can drag this process through the court system for so long. I remain hopeful for a fair outcome.”
