It was a nasty gash, requiring six stitches, but 12-year-old Marissa Pendleton is a tough young woman who lives on a farm outside Sebastopol and is used to cuts and bruises.
Neither she nor her parents contemplated the possibility that a flesh-eating bacteria had entered her body and was about to threaten her life.
That was on Thursday, June 7. The next morning, things appeared fine.
"It didn't look that bad at all, a little swollen," said Marissa's mother, Michelle Pendleton.
But by Saturday morning, Marissa's thigh was tight as a drum and she was in severe pain. Bruising had spread. Pendleton took her daughter to Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol.
"We thought they were going to give her antibiotics and send her home," she said.
Instead, Marissa, known to all as Missy, was airlifted in critical condition to Children's Hospital and Research Center in Oakland.
Tissue was already dying in her right leg, which she had cut open when she struck it on a sheep stand while carrying a goat.
Doctors believe that in the hours between when she cut her leg and got it stitched up, bacteria had entered her knee joint, evading procedures to wash the wound.
She would remain hospitalized nearly a month, overcoming a near-death encounter with necrotizing fasciitis and losing her right thigh muscle.
"I thought I was going to lose my whole leg," said Missy, an avid athlete who plays basketball, soccer and volleyball. "I felt really scared I wouldn't be able to play any sports ever again."
Her parents wrestled far greater horrors as doctors fought the infection.
"The first two days I think I was numb," Michelle Pendleton said. "They couldn't give us a definite answer that she was going to make it."
Missy on Tuesday left the hospital to return home. Her first act was to greet her menagerie of chickens, sheep, dogs, goats, bunnies and a horse. She sat on the patio and they each were brought up to welcome her home.
"I'm happy to see my animals," she said Thursday. "I'm feeling good now that I'm out. I loved the comfy bed in the hospital, but . . ."
Challenges remain, though. Her wound is still open and painful; its dressing must be changed nightly. Missy will be using a wheelchair for additional weeks and full rehabilitation may take up to two years.
"She's very much up and down with her spirits," her mother said. "Some days she's reassuring us almost, and some days, it hits her."
The night she returned home, Missy, who is to enter seventh grade at Twin Hills Middle School, wanted to see Sebastopol's fireworks show.
She hadn't anticipated that it would be difficult to watch her friends run around while she couldn't.
"She's very active, and at one point she wanted to leave because emotionally it's hard for her," her mother said.
"It's scary and difficult because I can't walk," Missy said. "And my sister is doing all the work and I feel bad about that."
Cassi Moore of Windsor can offer insight into Missy's illness and recovery -- in 1998, necrotizing fasciitis nearly killed her and she lost most of nine fingers, half her left foot and half her right leg.
"Don't give up. She's young and she can learn to compensate and it's amazing what the body will do," said Moore, 45.
"It just happened and she should give herself time and do everything they tell her in physical therapy," Moore said. "I've gone on to do all kinds of things."
Missy was feeling confident Thursday.
"I'll be back," she said.
(You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com.)
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