Alexis Hanford sat in her wheelchair, her left leg ramrod straight in a brace swaddled in pink-and-black leopard-print padding, her long, red hair newly cut and her toes freshly painted with beige polish. Just six weeks before, the 16-year-old lay in a hospital bed at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, sweating with a fever of 104 degrees as she battled a rare and especially vicious strain of necrotizing fasciitis - known as flesh-eating disease. Roberta L. DeBiasi, acting chief of the pediatric infectious diseases division at Children's, said that doctors asked questions about her accident to find clues. [...] this happened, she said, I thought we had lived a charmed life. Doctors put Alexis on an intravenous drip with the broadest spectrum of antibiotics, and she was wheeled into the operating room every few days so doctors could cut away dead muscle and tissue. Once a seasoned athlete who played soccer competitively, Alexis knows she has to learn again how to walk and will always have to use a small brace, although people who don't know she has it won't be able to tell, she said. Lily, a 16-year-old junior, decided that she wanted to thank the doctors who saved her best friend, so she launched the "Alexis Healing Project," a nonprofit effort to raise funds for Children's Hospital. The project, in partnership with Charm Georgetown, designed a "healing bracelet" made from wood and stone as a testament to Alexis's determination and her friends' commitment to helping her recover.
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