Someone on another message board I frequent mentioned seeing a man on TV whose face was almost literally a sunken crater, having been eaten away (and presumably collapsed) by a fungus that ate it away.
The only thing I know of is this episode of CSI (and I don’t think this was what the other poster was referring to); even there, the damage was not very severe (though fatal), and it needed human blood to grow. 
Anyone know anything about this? How common is this fungus? How is it formed?
I found the video here. Fast-forward to 2:27 at your own risk! Wow…that is bad. It says it is “Mucor”, which I also found at Wikipedia. A link from there to Mucormycosis has more information, and it appears to be very bad.
I wouldn’t worry too much though, considering that I teach Microbiology and have never heard of it, it’s probably not terribly common. And I’ve heard of some pretty rare nasty fungal diseases, most of them involving farmers who inhale the fungus directly into their lungs from animal waste.
Fungal infections are on the rise though, making up over 10% of hospital-acquired infections nowadays. The bad news is that they’re a lot more difficult to treat than bacteria because their pathways are more similar to ours.
He has since had a prosthetic face made so that he doesn’t attract quite as much attention in public.
Cruising the web, I discovered that Mr. Tatum passed away in February of 2005.
I have heard of other people with this sort of infection, but every other instance I heard of resulted in death. It’s really a horrible thing, though I suppose if it was caught very early the damage wouldn’t be so severe.
Fungal infections ARE difficult to treat but severe fungal infections are relatively rare in otherwise healthy people because the immune system generally deals with them just fine (think athlete’s foot).
However, they are very BAD news for people with severe immune system depression such as transplant recipients and cancer patients.
If they are on the rise and make up 10% of hospital-acquired infections it is because there are so many people living with cancer or transplanted organs these days.
I was sad when I read of Tatum’s death. I had read an article about him in Maxim magazine a few years earlier and was very impressed by his desire to live life to the fullest despite his disfigurement and lack of eyesight. He seemed to be a guy with a hell of a spirit, and he never let his condition bring him down - in fact, I think he said that sometimes would take off the fake part of his face just to scare kids on Halloween. OK, that might be a little traumatizing, but at least he had a sense of humor about it.
He was just an everyday guy going about his business, working in his garden, when all of a sudden this evil fungus attacked him. It doesn’t make any sense. I did not know that such things existed out there.
It’s just proof that the world is a dangerous place, I suppose.
Too bad the prosthetic they made for him looked like a cartoon face. Couldn’t they have, at least, brought in Rick Baker?
Or just go with the Darth Vader thing. That fake face is scarier than the idea of fungus eating your face off in the first place.
My face eats fungus all the time, no problem.
Come over sometime and I’ll show you a man eating chicken. 
Cripes. Yet another horror that I was completely unaware of.
:: shudder ::
Unabashed Hijack:
I’ve always related closing my eyes to initiating sleep, that I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have no eyes at all to close. How do people with such disfigurements go to sleep? Or keep from nodding off for that matter? Is there anything in the brain/nervous system, that when one closes their eyes, it triggers sleep?
How exactly would one do THAT? It’s not like there’s a medical test for fungus that’s routinely done, is there?
Well no, but if you have a sinus infection for more than a week, hie thee to a doc!
Indeed.
First of all, if you’re in a high-risk category such as organ recipient or insulin dependent diabetic or AIDS patient, checking for fungal infections starts to make more sense and can be done sooner rather than later in such patients.
Second, as pointed out, there’s a reason to go to the doctor for sinus problems or unrelenting congestion. Also, certain features, such as a black nasal discharge, can be a tip-off that this is a fungal problem.
The infection is rare, which means most doctors never see it, and if they did they won’t necessarily recognize it quickly. If, however, you are in a high-risk group a specialist may order relevant tests early - AIDS patients, in particular, are prone to fungal lung infections and are often tested for such things.
Even an early case of such an infection may still require disfiguring surgery, but not as extensive as what this gentleman endured. Personally, given a choice, I’d rather lose none of my face but better, perhaps, an eye and cheekbone than both sides and my jaw, ya know?