Ga. student's amazing recovery from flesh-eating infection

This image released by Disney-ABC Domestic Television shows host Katie Couric, right, applauding as Aimee Copeland, 24, of Snellville, Ga., who survived a rare fleshing-eating disease, as she arrives for an exclusive interview on the new daytime talk show "Katie," Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012, in New York. Copeland walked to the stage using a new walker. Copeland was joined in New York by her parents and sister.

Copeland got the infection in May after falling from a zip line along a Ga. river and gashing her leg. Doctors had to amputate both her hands, her left leg and right foot. She returned home to suburban Atlanta last month after three months in the hospital and a rehabilitation clinic.

In this Saturday, June 23 2012 file photo provided by the Copeland family, Aimee Copeland is seen outside Doctors Hospital in Augusta, Ga. Aimee was released from Doctors Hospital on Monday, July 2, 2012. She moved to an inpatient rehabilitation clinic in Atlanta, the Shepherd Center, and spent about two months learning to move herself with the aid of a wheelchair.

The 24-year-old University of West Georgia graduate student survived a flesh-eating bacterial infection that forced doctors to amputate most of her left leg, her right foot and both hands. The infection, necrotizing fasciitis, occurred after she gashed her leg following a zip line accident on a Georgia river May 1, 2012. After spending weeks in a Ga. hospital as doctors tried to stop the infection's spread, Copeland was finally able to breathe on her own and speak by late May. Copeland also underwent painful skin grafts during her recovery to replace skin that was destroyed by the infection.