MRSA "superbug" warning
 

from MRSA wiki

CDC info


Staph screening said may wipe out germ

this is from an email that my school's health services sent out:
I had a misquito bite, so I had it checked out b/c i'm a spaz... but its worth it b/c this stuff could really spread

As someone with a chronic condition (and who is very suseptible to scary bugs), I wanted to put my thoughts about MRSA out there.

MRSA has been around for a long time. It's nothing new. It's been lurking around hospitals forever. The reason it is getting so much news coverage now is that there are more reported cases in people who have not been in the hospital, nor who have a chronic illness.

People do NOT need to panic.

The NUMBER ONE prevention is hand washing. If you DO get MRSA, it is very treatable. But again, prevention is the best "cure".

It's scary, yes, but not an epidemic. Just be careful.

REE- thanks, yes this is true, i shouldn't have been so quick to post in a "omg freak out" way, i sorry. :o
everyone in my office was spazzing b/c of htis stupid misquito bite so i figured i'd pass along the info

Put it on the shelf next to bird flu, the hantavirus, west nile, etc. Just another overblown, media driven scare tactic trying to bring in ratings. It's just another manufactured crisis.

Oh, no problem. I didn't mean you specifically. The newscasters would have you believe that it's the plague of the 21st century.

Not to be an alarmist, but it isn't just a hospital bug.

6 years ago, my son had been sailing all weekend long and when we were heading back into town, he mentioned that his knee hurt. He had, what looked to be, an ingrown hair, or pimple on his knee. I told him that we'd clean it and that it would be fine.

The next morning when I got him up to go to school, it had swollen and was red. I (have to admit, begrudgingly) took him to the pediatrician, who took a look at it and said that he wanted to admit him to the hospital just in case. He said that it was probably just an ordinary staph infection, but that they were seeing more of this weird antibiotic resistant strain and it would be prudent just to check it out.

Well, it turned out to be MRSA, and it was a huge ordeal consisting of 7 days in the hospital, surgery to remove the infected tissue, bone scans, echo cardigrams, and 2 more weeks on an IV of a medicine of last resort called Vancomycin, that my husband and I had to administer. It was scary as hell.

Since then, besides becoming a clean freak, I am much more aware of skin issues. At my kids' high school, there have been numerous incidents of staph (the treatable kind) and a couple of cases of MRSA.

It is much more common than you think:mad:

Don't mean that meanie face about any posts, just the bug - it SUCKS!

I am currently taking vancomycin intravenously due to an MRSA infection. It's good that your pediatrician was cautious - it is, indeed, a dangerous and sometimes fatal infection. The times (yes...more than once) I have had it, I never exhibited any external symptoms, but I have gotten so violently ill so quickly that I can't imagine anyone letting it go untreated long enough for it to progress enough to affect the heart, bones or other organs.

I suppose that could turn out to be true, but the University of Colorado health services just put out an alert on the situation after seeing many more cases than usual in the student body.

When something like that happens, it's likely to be reported.

Well, I wouldn't go THAT far, there is nothing manufactured about the increased reportings of MRSA in the general population.

My point was that its existence is nothing new... and that it is not an epidemic. That being said, all procautions (all of which are common sense) should be taken.

If nothing else, the sudden "awareness" of MRSA will be a wakeup call to people that there are these scary bugs out there (and you DON'T want to have them), but like so many other infections, they are largely preventable.

To those of you who have cultured MRSA, you know how hard it is to get rid of it. Good luck in your treatments!!!!

In the Detroit area, we've been hearing about MRSA for about a month now. There were a few outbreaks in surrounding schools. They basically had to close the schools down and do a total cleanup with bleach and all that other stuff.

It's been going around in Virginia, too. They closed a few schools after a kid died from it two weeks ago and deep cleaned. The other cases haven't been nearly that severe, but this kid was left untreated by his doctors and ended up dead. It's an eye-opener.

my exboyfriend had it in his knee.

my former boss in a finger.

i had it in my torso this spring.

all of us recovered fine. yeah super sick--especially my ex--who had to have surgery and me--i was out of work for nearly 3 weeks and on heavy drugs -- but we are all fine today.

Lol any connection?

Pretty much all of us have or have had staph on our skin at some point in time, it's just a matter of how it's treated, if it becomes infected, and how good your immune system is. Once it hits your blood stream, you have major problems.

Since I visit nursing homes as part of my job, I have always carried Purell with me, but I admit that I've become even more careful at this point. In the last two weeks, two of our clients were hospitalized with one ailment, but ended up with MRSA, which contributed to their deaths. I'm not planning to become a statistic.

In 1995, we almost lost one of our children to this. She was 5 months old and had come to us from Vietnam not long before.

She probably got it here..thank God she got it here and not in Vietnam because she surely wouldn't have made it. As it was, she spent 2 weeks in Egleston in Atlanta and it was horrible. She too had to have surgery to remove the infected tissue.

The same year, we knew of several people who contracted it--a woman whose sweater had rubbed on her skin, a guy who was playing golf and some dirt hit him in the eye, and a woman who was cutting up chicken (she died within a day). Our doctor told us that at the same time our daughter was in the hospital, another of his patients had it: a little boy who had fallen and cut his head on a stereo. Within 24 hours, a huge red mask had swollen around his eyes and they thought he would lose his eyesight or even die. He got through it okay.

If she was dating an 8th grader! :)

He was pretty closed mouthed about his love life back then!



I recently heard about a woman in my neighborhood who had gone to a water park and scraped her arm on a slide. She got sick over the weekend and her husband took her to the doctor on Monday. She had died by Wednesday. Really sad, she was a young mom with two elementary age kids.:(

FWIW, a friend of mine who works at the Atlanta CDC says that he would rather lick a petri dish than go to a water park. And since you all don't know him, he is most definitely not an alarmist.

We got "the letter" home from school today, although I knew about it on Friday. A 9th grader at the high school has MRSA so they disinfected the school all weekend and sent home letters today. The marching band wasn't allowed to use the school over the weekend for their practices or to get ready for their competition. While the media didn't pick it up about our school, they've been announcing new schools daily. I think they started to realize that they were inciting panic though because they've changed how they discuss it now. Initially, they made it sound like everybody who got it died. Now they are talking about how treatable it is if caught early, which is a more useful message.

OK I'm confused. Maybe one of you in the health profession can clarify. My D got MRSA at college last year. It was a red dot (bug bite size/pimple) which got a little larger and was on her leg near knee. The school clinic drained it, sent it to lab and gave her Bactroban (ointment) and Septra for 10 days. They acted like it was common. SO, my question is: how does this little bump turn deadly? Did those people not get it drained in time or just ignore the red bump or what?

The deadly part comes into play when the infection reaches the bloodstream, heart muscle/other organ or bone. According to my doctor, staph is everywhere, on everyone. At my dialysis clinic, they do an annual nose swab because it is apparently common for it to be in the nasal passages.

I had one on my eyebrow. I ignored it for a week and then started draining it myself and put myself on Augmentin for 7 days. When it started peeling (and didn't go away or get smaller) I went to the doctor who referred me to a surgeon. I told him that Augmentin hadn't touched it. He slit it open and drained it and packed it for a day. He put me on 3 days of Levaquin (which tore my stomach up) and now I keep a band-aid on it while the incision heals. It was very very painful, but I certainly didn't die from it. BUT, it sounds like if I had let it go and never gotten it treated, I could have gotten really sick. As it was, it was just an annoyance. I had one on my armpit last year that had to be packed every day for a week and I was on two different types of antibiotics. Same procedure as before only worse. Not sure what causes these but I think that I'm just more suseptible when I'm tired, etc. This latest one came on the heels of a cold sore and my surgeon said those can weaken your immune system enough to allow one of these nasty bugs to strike. A friend of mine had 2 at once near his scrotum and had to pack those himself every day - not fun! Just stay as clean and healthy as you can - and don't wait to go to the doc if you're worried you may have it! Pretty simple!

Wow!!! :eek:

Not to be funny, but how are you NOT in a bubble? Seriously? Please take care of yourself, because this MRSA isht is not funny.

I hate to be "all nosy" but when you (Fran) say you got "violently ill so quickly" what exactly are you saying since you said you didn't have a skin spot? Fever, chills, headache, stomach flu type gunk or what? What should we all be looking for? Many of us get sick and say "I'll wait a couple days and see if it's a 48 hr thing" and now I read that time can cost a life with this MRSA. So, how does it get inside you if it doesn't come from a skin spot?

I'm still freaking out by the college girl last week who died of meningitis with the classic headache/stiff neck symptoms and the hospital made fun of her and called her a "drama queen" when she asked to be medivac'd elsewhere in TN.

Most bacterial infections cause a rapid increase in body temperature with eye soreness and redness, and horrific migraines. We are talking ~100+ within 12 hours. There is also vomiting and blood out of some orifices. Not to be gross, but it is Halloween, some mucus will be yellowish green. And the site of primary infection could appear black or scabbed...

That is the usual pathology for Staph infections gone wild. It is worse when it is MRSA.

Not to mention opportunistic infections coming along for the ride.

Basically, some folks need to use a lot of liquid soap with bleach or lye and MAYBE there won't be distorted infections. But we don't do it like that anymore...

Let me explain my staph experience - I am a dialysis patient with a porta-cath in my chest - staph is a fairly common occurrence because of the very slight opening in the chest wall. The first symptoms are flu-like: headache, body aches, fever - especially at night - I usually have night sweats before it gets full-blown. By the next day, the fever is much higher and I can't keep ANYTHING down. It progresses quickly. When I've had it, there wasn't much doubt that I needed medical attention and that it wasn't just something that would go away by itself.

How did you put yourself on Augmentin? Are you licensed to dispencse prescription medication?

That wasn't really the point in my post - why do you ask?

It stands out to me too.

Augmentin is an antibiotic. You put yourself on it for seven days, suggesting that a) you didn't finish a course of antibiotics, b) that you took older and possibly expired drugs, and c) you took another shortened course of antibiotics.

These are things that help create superbugs. You don't kill the bacteria, you only kill some of it, leaving the rest to potentially become stronger. So then you had to be prescribed a stronger antibiotic that is worse for your body and would perhaps have been unnecessary if you'd not abused the previous one.

You are being part of the problem, not part of the solution.