Mrsa

[Tammy]

A while back I wrote about my concern that my daughter who is 20 months old may have MRSA. I wasn't sure at the time, but tests have come back as MRSA. It is the community acquired version, so it is presenting itself as boils all over her body. We had been in the hospital with her for vancomyicin IV treatments since her sores were pregressing so fast and with how young she is. She couldn't complete the treatment though, as she had a severe allergic reaction to it, so is now on oral Bactrim, ointment for her sores, ointment for her nose to try to eradicate her as a carrier, and Hibiclens baths. She is slowly healing, but her 10 day regamine will be done in less than 4 days, and since her spots of not yet all healed, not sure if they will start to spead again once she is done with them or not. I have a boil myself (as of yesterday) and my husband has been running a low grade fever for the past 8 days with fatigue, but our doctors aren't too concerned with that right now. They just want us to get tested as MRSA carriers at some point. What I don't get is why this happened. We have good hygiene, don't use antibiotics (I think I had to take them when I had pneomonia in 99, and I made sure to take them all as prescribed), keep our house clean as possible (with my low energy level, at times, it can slip some but surfaces have always been clean and well kept, just not overly organized!), and due to my illness, I am home like 99% of the time, so have very little community contact. It's just so frustrating and somewhat hopeless feeling with all I've learned about this awful disease. At this point, only 1% of the population of the 30% of the population that carry staph infections are the MRSA form, but from the view of the doctors at the hopsital, they made it sound like these infections are on the rise and that it's a sign of the times. All I do know is that all the extra clothing washing, obsessive hand washing, disinfecting (found that very few disinfectants are even valid against killing this strain, but bleach at a 1:10 ratio is suppose to help), and medication dosing is so draining, but I just want our family to survive this possible "killer" bacteria.

Thanks for letting me vent about something other than my typical POTSY symptoms

Tammy

[MightyMouse]

Your daughter could have contracted MRSA from a source somewhere other than your home--although for kids, a common place can be daycare. That and schools area common places where kids (and staff) can pick up bacterial infections, and viral too; with so many kids, often pre-potty training, it's tough, if not impossible to make sure absolutely everything is clean all the time. Or, even if you cleaned it, a child may have contaminated it again rather quickly, especially things like shared toys, chairs, desktops, doorknobs, lightswitches. It's impossible to say where the source was--you may never know.

Nina