Anchor Wendy Ryan is getting better every day. Now she's out of the hospital and resting at home. She has a powerful message of her own to share about her experience, and what you may not realize you need to look out for.
For days, Wendy has been in the hospital with pain.
“The infection was literally this big you know and it spread pretty rapidly, and it scared me really bad,” she said.
Wendy has been fighting a staph infection above her eye.
“In her case, if you plucked the eyebrow or even washing her skin it had a tiny little scrape, it could get in there," internist Dr. Jeetpaul Saran said.
Wendy's infection spread quickly.
“The scary thing is the location near the eye, lucky for her, it was kind of stuck on the skin portion. But if it went to her muscles it could also go back into her eye and could actually cause loss of vision of her eye," Saran said.
Losing her vision is something Wendy and her family couldn't even think about.
“If I had waited just a few hours, it could have traveled behind my eye, and I easily could have lost my eye," Wendy said.
“We found out later she could have died, and it’s crazy. She could have died of a pimple because of you know everything that happened," said Wendy's husband, Jerome Ritchey.
Now Wendy's story is a warning.
“If you know something’s wrong, don’t wait, get to the doctor, get to the ER because it could be your life," she said.
Thankfully, Wendy's story will end with her back where she belongs, at ABC Action News.
“The next time I’m on the set and I’m anchoring the news, which I hope is soon, I’m going to look out at the prompter and probably get a little teary eyed and just thank God that I can see with both eyes and say thank you God for healing me and putting me back together,” Wendy said.
Wendy is still on antibiotics but said she can't wait to get back to work. She also thanks all of her viewers for their supportive messages online.
