SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia woman fighting a rare flesh-eating disease is alert and bored enough to ask her family for a book.

Aimee Copeland's request comes just a week after doctors gave her little chance of survival.

Her father said Tuesday his daughter is still breathing on a respirator but is improving more rapidly than expected. He says the 24-year-old graduate student faces months of recovery at an Augusta hospital. She was taken there after she got an infection in a cut she suffered when a zip line snapped over a river.

Andy Copeland tells The Associated Press doctors still believe they will have to amputate his daughter's fingers, though they think they can save her palms and her right foot. She has already lost most of her left leg.