Girl With Flesh-Eating Disease Off The Ventilator And ‘Cracking Jokes’

May 21 2012, Published 1:00 p.m. ET
By Debbie Emery - Breaking Celebrity News Reporter
Following a harrowing few weeks where she lost both her hands, her left leg and right foot, the Georgia girl whose body is being ravaged by a flesh-eating disease celebrated a small victory on Sunday when she was taken off the ventilator and finally breathed on her own.
Aimee Copeland proved that even the devastating bacteria couldn’t destroy her good spirits and her family revealed that she is already acting like normal.
"Aimee is being Aimee. She's cracking jokes, speaking frankly, displaying her usual early morning grumpiness and she has been off of the ventilator for over 10 hours," Andy Copeland said in a blog post on Sunday night.
“They are running an oxygen ‘mask’ to her tracheostomy at an o2 level of only 35 percent, but the important thing is that she is getting zero breath per minute (bpm) assists,” her dad explained. “In other words, she is breathing completely on her own! How cool is that?”
“Bottom line: Aimee is doing great today. *insert crazy-grin-happy-face here*” wrote the proud parent.
As Breaking Celebrity News previously reported, the 24-year-old from Snellville, Georgia, contracted the hideous infection, after falling from a homemade zip line into infected water near the Little Tallapoosa River on May 1.
She suffer