MRSA Scarey read

[gritsar]

Last April, my SO came home from work sick with what we thought was the flu. This was on a Saturday afternoon. When I called him from work on Sunday morning to check on him, I could tell immediately something was wrong just by the tone of his voice. I came home and rushed him to the ER. They initially thought it was a stroke....he was talking 'out of his head' (we later learned it was because of his 104.9 fever). It took three days for them to confirm that what he had was systemic e.coli. It shut down his kidneys and was shutting down his liver. It was working on his muscles and his meninges.
That was almost 9 months ago and he's still recovering. The doctor later told us that his chance of surviving it had only been 50/50 and that it could take a full year for him to recover.
We were pretty nonchalant about these types of bacteria before, but not anymore.
I touch nothing questionable that I don't cleanse my hands with hand sanitizer immediately after (before I touch anything else). Also, we treat every wound as a possible entryway into the body, even little scratches.
We may go a little overboard now, but I have never in my life seen anyone as sick as my SO was; and I don't ever want to again.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Yes, well, while ther are a lot of things out there to be afraid of and you do just have to live your life, I think it's important to try our darnedest to minimize some of those "things" when we notice them, like murderers running loose, or strongly toxic chemicals in the public water supply, or people blithely sitting by while their neighbors starve. Not everything should be just let to happen.

And while it is undeniably handy to "have a good immune system" (as you say) unoccupied with any other significant challenges and up to the job at hand, plenty of people at some points in their lives don't. Not because of ignorance or laziness or vice or any other character flaw but just because sometimes life is, you know, unfair.

And when you DO acquire an infection, is it not a whole lot better to have it be one that is pretty easily curable by antibiotics?

The more MSRA bugs there are floating around our daily environment, the more likely it is that when your body's natural defenses slip up you will be effectively back in the days before penicillin and sulfa drugs, when infection quite often meant death. Of course if you are a rich person in a rich nation, modern medicine still does have some things at its diposal that may help save you (at a big price), but that does no good for most people does it.

Go read some of the things that were written in the era when penicillin and sulfa drugs were first introduced. Really, go read up on iyt. Antibiotics were hailed as a giant miracle that would prevent the tremendous losses of life that were customary due to infection, sometimes from even the simplest things like a splinter. Read up on what life, medicine and life-expectancy were like before antibiotics.

THEN lets see whether it seems so trivial to worry about a society, or really *world*, that is willy-nilly SELECTING FOR bacteria that resist the effects of many or all known antibiotics, which is basically pushing us further back towards those 'olden' but decidedly not golden days.

Pat

 

[BlueDevilGirl67]

PLease don't think that a hospital ( which I work in ) is the only place you can get MRSA. One can be a carrier and never know it. My daughter had what we thought was a minor bug bite that went into a full blown boil 3 summers ago and we got a lesson in MRSA ( my boss basically quaterbacked her care--his sister's best friend had died--he did not want to see his adopted child die either). We found out she is a carrier and I passed it down to her ( I got a boil later that summer). She gets any type of bug bite we use steriod creme to keep her from scratching because we know where it can go.

 

[KingsCalls]

So, in other words.........one of the if not the largest causes of this is ....LARGE SCALE OPERATIONS....! One more reason not to give into NAIS..! It will make it next to impossible for the smaller farmers/hobbiers to make it.

 

[Reinbeau]

Quote:
That's right, that's the whole point. And protect companies like Monsanto from any liability through the power of legal counsel none of us can afford to fight. It makes me sick. un

un

 

[dbjay417]

MRSA breeds in filth and is prolific in prison populations and among drug users. MRSA isn't new to the US. Its only "important" now because its found its way into the media spotlight.

Take a bath, wash your clothes, change your bedsheets, and you might just live to see tomorrow. Staph is a pretty common bacteria, problems come when they find their way into open wounds.