Days after giving birth to twins, a Greenville County mother has been hospitalized for what doctors say is a rare flesh-eating infection. 
 
 The development follows the similar affliction of a Georgia graduate student, who lost her left leg and may lose her fingers. But experts say the South Carolina case, though serious, is less severe than the Georgia one and caused by a different bacterium. 
 
 Lana Kuykendall, 36, gave birth to healthy twins at an Atlanta hospital last week. When the new family of four returned to their home in Piedmont, the mother — who is also a paramedic — noticed a pain and rash on her left leg. 
 
 As the spot began to spread, Kuykendall went to a local hospital, where she has since undergone several surgeries but was improving Thursday. 
 
 "She's stable," Darren Kuykendall, the woman's husband, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Greenville Memorial Hospital. 
 
 Friends and family are helping care for the couple's week-old twins, who are healthy. A fund has been set up to help with Kuykendall's care. 
 
 The condition is called necrotizing fasciitis, the same disorder that has Georgia graduate student Aimee Copeland fighting for her life in a hospital several hundred miles away. Doctors say Copeland, 24, has lost a leg and could lose all her fingers from the infection that spread days after she suffered a deep cut while zip-lining. 
 
 In that case, doctors have said Copeland has been infected by Aeromonas hydrophila, a flesh-eating bacterium that emits toxins that cut off blood flow to parts of the body, destroying muscle, fat and skin tissue. Flesh-eating Aeromonas cases are so rare that only a handful of infections have been reported in medical journals in recent decades. 
 
 Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said the South Carolina woman's case has its root in Group A streptococcus. That's the same bacteria that can cause strep throat, of which millions of cases are reported annually in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
 But when it finds an area of the body that has recently undergone a trauma — like a cut or deep bruise, which Kuykendall may have experienced during the delivery of her twins — Group A strep can manifest itself into the flesh-eating disorder that has landed Kuykendall in the hospital, Schaffner said. 
 
 "It causes a lot of pain," Schaffner said. "It can evade diagnosis for a period of time." 
 
 According to the CDC, between 9,000 and 11,500 cases of invasive Group A strep happen each year in the United States, resulting in upward of 1,000 deaths. 
 
 Not contagious, the bacterium is best treated by antibiotics and surgeries to remove dead tissue, which Schaffner said can spread so rapidly that doctors must go in multiple times to cut out more areas. 
 
 Kuykendall, who has been keeping vigil at the hospital, said he knows his wife will improve but is sad she has missed time bonding with their babies. 
 
 "The sad part about it is that she hasn't gotten to see the babies for the first week of their lives," Kuykendall told WYFF-TV (http://bit.ly/KBkzMd). "I talk to her every day. I tell her how good she's doing, and how strong she is, and that she's a fighter. She can make it." 
 
 Fund for Kuykendall's care: GHS Federal Credit Union, 864-455-7112 
 
 Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP 

 (CNN) -- A South Carolina woman undergoing treatment for infection with a rare case of "flesh-eating" bacteria was in critical but stable condition Thursday at Greenville Memorial Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said. 
 
 Lana Kuykendall, 36, "underwent her fifth debridement surgery to remove necrotic, or dead, tissue from her lower leg," said Sandy Dees, senior media relations coordinator for Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center, in a news release. 
 
 Kuykendall was admitted and diagnosed last Friday with necrotizing fasciitis, the release said. 
 
 A team of surgeons, critical-care physicians and infection disease specialists was monitoring her condition, which is typically managed by surgery, antibiotics and aggressive supportive care, it said. 
 
 "She remains very ill but stable," Dr. Bill Kelly, the hospital epidemiologist, said in the release. 
 
 Kuykendall was healthy when she gave birth to twins on May 7 in Atlanta but went to the hospital near her home in South Carolina a few days later after noticing a rapidly expanding bruise on her leg, her husband, Darren, told CNN on Wednesday. Doctors there removed dead skin and tissue from her legs and she was put on a ventilator, he said. 
 
 Kuykendall is a nurse and paramedic; her husband is a firefighter. The twins are healthy, he said. 
 
 A two-hour drive south of Greenville, in Augusta, Georgia, 24-year-old Aimee Copeland was battling similarly aggressive bacteria on Thursday. Doctors have amputated one of her legs and surgically removed part of her abdomen. Her father, Andy Copeland, told CNN on Wednesday that her fingers, too, will have to be amputated. 
 
 Still, "Aimee continues to be in good spirits," said a blog posted on the website of the Psychology Department at the University of West Georgia, where Aimee Copeland is a graduate student. 
 
 "Two major medical developments today for Aimee," it said. "Those will be announced later today once Andy has the opportunity to type them out. Stay tuned." 
 
 Copeland contracted the flesh-devouring bacteria Aeromonas hydrophila when she fell May 1 from a homemade zip line that broke and cut her leg. The gash required 22 staples. Days later, still in pain, she went to the Augusta hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with necrotizing fasciitis. 
 
 The psychology student is on a ventilator and has undergone a tracheotomy. 
 
 Flesh-eating bacteria explained 
 
 A number of bacteria can cause the condition, which attacks and destroys healthy tissue and is fatal about 20% of the time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
 The bacteria are common in the environment but rarely cause an infection; when they do, the body's immune system is almost always able to fight them off, according to experts. 
 
 Occasionally, however, the bacteria find their way into the bloodstream -- either through a cut or an abrasion. 
 
 In such cases, doctors move aggressively, excising even healthy tissue near the infection site to ensure none of the dangerous bacteria remain. 
 
 Necrotizing fasciitis is rare. Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, estimated in a telephone interview on Wednesday that fewer than 250 cases occur each year in the United States, though such estimates are imprecise since doctors do not have to report the cases to health authorities. 
 
 CNN's Melissa Gray contributed to this report
– As Aimee Copeland continues to fight necrotizing fasciitis, another woman in the Southeast is battling the flesh-eating bacteria, too. Just days after giving birth to twins, Lana Kuykendall had severe pain in her leg—and then husband Darren noticed a spot that looked like a bruise or a blood clot that was spreading quickly. “Literally, you could almost watch it grow as you're standing there,” he says. By the time he got her to the hospital, where she is currently in critical condition, the affected tissue “had almost encircled her leg,” he says. No word on where the South Carolina woman picked up the infection, which is typically spread through an open wound or cut but can also enter the bloodstream through internal bleeding such as a black-and-blue mark, CNN reports. An epidemiologist tells WLTX that people shouldn’t panic even though both cases are in the Southeast (Copeland is in Georgia). "It's just chance, it doesn't mean we're going to see another one any sooner,” he says. “It's very uncommon here." Kuykendall, 36, has had skin and tissue removed from her legs and is using a ventilator, but her husband is optimistic for her recovery and says she is stable.