Aimee Copeland’s Rehab Workout: 200 Crunches, 400 Leg Lifts - East Idaho News
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Aimee Copeland’s Rehab Workout: 200 Crunches, 400 Leg Lifts

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073012 AimeeCopeland?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1343671438133ABC News(ATLANTA) — Aimee Copeland is getting stronger, one crunch at a time.

Copeland is the 24-year-old Georgia graduate student whose body was ravaged by a flesh-eating bacteria she contracted in early May. The bacteria has taken her left leg, right foot and both of her hands.

According to a blog post by her father, Andy Copeland, Aimee is attacking her rehab routine with a vengeance.

“During each of her physical therapy sessions, Aimee does two hundred crunches in seven minutes,” Andy Copeland writes. “Aimee also has to do four hundred leg lifts in seven minutes, an untold number of pushups and something else that she calls ‘planks’ and ‘sideplanks.’”

Andy Copeland said the purpose of the grueling exercise regimen is for Aimee to strengthen her body enough to enable her to use a wheelchair and, eventually, prosthetics.

Nearly three months have passed since Copeland, of Snellville, Ga., suffered the cut on her leg in a fall from a homemade zip line near the Little Tallapoosa River that led to the infection.

Infection with flesh-eating bacteria is quite rare, but more often than not it is deadly. Mortality rates for the type of bacterial infection that Aimee Copeland contracted are higher than 60 percent, according to a 2010 report published in the journal Clinical Microbiology Reviews.

Since leaving the hospital earlier this month, Copeland has been continuing her recovery at a rehabilitation facility. Her parents chose not to reveal the location of the facility for privacy reasons, but it is thought to be close to her home.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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