It was Thanksgiving 2015 when animal lover Anna Giacomi set out to do something she’d done hundreds of times before: feed her favorite donkey at a local farm.
When the Georgia mother of two bent down to get a pear from her purse, the donkey bit her arm and dragged her under the barbed wire.
What followed was a violent attack that lasted for several minutes, during which she was repeatedly bitten and stomped, shattering her left arm and hand and breaking several ribs.
Her injuries, though severe, were expected to heal within months. But a series of medical failures left Mrs. Giacomi with a flesh-eating infection that ravaged one side of her body. Three weeks after the attack, her left arm was amputated above the elbow and her left leg above the knee.
LIFE CHANGING: Anna Giacomi is pictured above with her legal team. She sued the hospital that treated her for more than $40 million and won
A CASE THAT BUCKS THE TREND: The donkey that attacked her. She said he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her under the barbed wire
Ms Giacomi told DailyMail.com of her injuries: ‘I try not to think about it too much… but I depend on people to help me with almost everything. [nowadays].
‘Getting out of bed, putting on my clothes, bathing, going to the toilet, cooking, cleaning, etc. Everything is affected.’
She added: ‘I went for walks, volunteered at the hospital where all this happened and volunteered at the animal shelter. I miss those activities very much.’
Mrs Giacomi says she does not blame the donkey for what happened and that she is even afraid of animals because of the infection.
She says she has always loved animals and used to rescue cats and dogs regularly.
She had also spent the past five years feeding this donkey, which was kept in a pen on a working farm, next to a sign inviting people to feed him apples and pears.
Instead, she confided her life-changing injuries to one of the hospitals that treated her, successfully suing the hospital for $47 million in damages for past and future pain and suffering.
A Georgia jury found that the hospital, Union General Hospital, and its chief surgeon, Dr. James Heaton, were negligent for failing to notice telltale signs that she had blood poisoning.
The retiree has now had to move to Miami, Florida, to be closer to her son, who helps her with daily care.
She fears she will never be able to return to her beloved Italy, which she left at age 10 to move to the US.
After the attack on November 26, 2015, doctors first cleaned and bandaged her wounds, gave her antibiotics, and when she appeared stable, they transferred her to a nursing home.
But less than 24 hours after she was moved, nurses reported — according to court documents — a “foul odor” coming from her ankle and a significant amount of fluid coming from it.
The next day they said a green crust had formed on her toes.
But the staff took no action and her assigned surgeon, Dr James Heaton, who has since been jailed for running a ‘pill mill’ from the centre, failed to visit her.
It took more than a week before nurses could intervene on her growing necrotizing fasciitis infection (pictured) and finally call a surgeon
At one point a surgeon who entered her room where she had been left for days said it 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.
On admission, nurses noted a “necrotic black spot” on the top of her left foot, which was “about 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” Ronald Westfall, who said she did not need to see a surgeon.
When a doctor finally saw her, five days after her admission, he said her room smelled so bad it resembled a dead animal left on the side of the road. He ordered her to be taken back to her first hospital, Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC).
Mrs Giacomi has little recollection of this period, saying she was ‘out of her element’ due to the pain and the medication she was taking.
She does remember repeatedly expressing her concern about her legs, saying she was in constant, severe pain.
“I can’t remember any details at the time,” she said, “but I do remember the general surgeon who eventually got me out of the hospital said my room smelled like a dead animal because of the infection.
‘I was lying in bed crying and saying that no one would listen to me.’
Each year, approximately 1,200 Americans are diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis infections, or flesh-eating bacterial infections. These infections are fast-moving and occur when bacteria begin to multiply in the tissue and blood vessels surrounding the joints.
It can develop in hospitals in vulnerable patients, when a wound becomes infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the patient can no longer fight the infection.
Ms. Giacomi is pictured above in a 2017 interview she gave after the attack
In this condition, prompt intervention is always necessary to control the infection before it progresses further.
About 22 percent of cases lead to amputation, and in rare cases it can also be fatal.
Mrs. Giacomi sees her case as a warning of what can happen in the hospital.
“I want people to realize that this happened,” she said, “that an infection got out of control and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
She settled out of court with the commercial farm that owned the donkey. The amount of the settlement was not disclosed.
And this month, she won her medical negligence case against Union General Hospital, with the jury awarding her $47 million for past and future pain and suffering.
There is a good chance that the case will be appealed by the insurance company, but Mrs. Giacomi remains hopeful that justice will prevail.
“I am so grateful to the jury for hearing my case and finding the truth,” she said.
“I feel vindicated. But I am also disappointed at the prospect of an appeal and how the defense can drag this out in the legal system for so long. I remain hopeful for a just outcome.”