08-13-07 Out of the woods?
I'm almost afraid to post this note! No further sores, no one else in the family got any sores while he had his leg wound. All of our precautions and Monk-like living seemed to work! Praise God, I think the worst is gone! I will still leave the site for others to have a hope. My husband took a look at the number of hits this site gets and it is just staggering to me. So many people are still facing this battle and are looking for answers. I hope I can give you some small measure of peace knowing there can be a light at the end of your tunnel too.
Give God your problems, give the germs your Lysol. Don't give up. Pray and have peace.
~Helen
09-30-06 Update
Things have been going well. We still use the silver bandaids for anything suspicious. We keep Bactroban on hand, just in case. The swimming pool and high chlorination seems to be the answer for long term decolonization. I'm updating some of the site to remove broken links. If you find something on the internet that should be linked here, please let me know!
~Helen
01-27-05 Bumps & Product Evaluations
The Curad Waterproof Silver bandaids stay on very well. It's a 48 hour bandaid. The tape or adhesive part is clear so you can see if there is irritation. It kind of reminds me of tegaderm or opsite if you know what they are like. It does seem to help, but you can't put antibiotic or bactroban oint under it. I used it to protect a deep abrassion on my sons side and it healed it easily 3 times faster than just covering it. Also since I didn't have to change it 3 times a day and re-apply Bactroban, the skin didn't get torn up from adhesive. After wearing it 48 in a very active spot, there was light redness as if I had removed just one regular bandage. Not the massive irritation I would have seen from 6 bandaid changes. Over all, aside from outragous price, it's a good product and I will get more.
I bought some Tea Tree Oil (TTO) shampoo by Paul Mitchell. Both my sons tried it and like the smell. It's kind of piney/evergreen like. They said it also reminds them of peppermint. It can be overpowering in the steam of the shower so you might recommend using it at the end of the shower. I'll post an update if it seems to be working particularly well or not.
I haven't picked up any of the oil yet, since I found it already in a shampoo and that was what I wanted. There are stability and toxicity questions with TTO so I want to be careful with it.
Well I had gotten low on Bactroban and was being skimpy. I was just using the Bactroban on visible bumps and the Aveeno everywhere else and it made the rash mentioned below pop up. Now after just 2 days of using the Bactroban and Aveeno mix, the rash is gone again. It has left a ton of little tiny bumps. You can't see most of them and hardly see the others. I can only feel them when applying the Aveeno/Bactroban mix. If the bumps are an indication of how bad the rash was going to be, it could have been REAL ugly, real quick. His whole upper arms would have been raw. The rash patches I described below are faded and no longer raised. The dry skin may give the CA-MRSA purchase but it is definitely still aggressively trying to find a way in. I'm hoping the Tea Tree Oil shampoo from Paul Mitchell will help.
01-21-05 Rash
The pea size amount of Bactroban and a couple squirts of Aveeno lotion worked great at making all the recurring rashes go away. Unfortunately, when they are gone, you start thinking you've won. That's when they come back. There are 'patches' of skin that look like they are abrasions. Quarter or Thumb-sized areas with little red spots. I don't know if I should just consider it winter dry skin rash or keep treating it like it is the CA-MRSA. It's the Chicken and the Egg problem. Is the CA-MRSA causing the rash or is the dry skin rash allowing the CA-MRSA to have access.
12-24-04 Traditional Christmas-Eve Decolonization
The kids were gone and we had the time so we attacked the house, furniture, everything that held still with Lysol. Then we steam cleaned the carpets and furniture, including dinning room chairs. Sprayed the beds and pillows with Lysol and let them air well.
I'm not sure if it helps but it made me feel better lol It felt like I was doing something about MRSA/ORSA in my house. Besides that you should have seen the water in the steam cleaner from cleaning the furniture! It was a chore well overdue!
12-17-04 So How Long Do I Have To Live With This Stuff?
If you have to ask that question, you must have seen one of the medical professionals described below lol
The short answer is . . . For right now... for always.
I'm very sorry that "deal with it!" may have been your advice so far. Trust God. Know that you aren't alone. Know there are competent medical people and scientists working on this every day and maybe right at this very moment coming up with a solution. Know that even if they don't, you can still trust God.
I know I do.
12-16-04 Forgive me while I rant?
Is it Spider Bites? Is it an allergic reaction to an antibiotic? It's just a boil, a rub spot. They come and go. Right? Or is it Community Acquired ORSA/MRSA?
I think the medical community for the most part, has it all backwards with this MRSA/ORSA deal. They have dealt with it within the healthcare system for so long now that they are brainwashed in to believing they have a corner on the market. So unless you've been in the healthcare system recently for surgery or illness, they don't diagnosis this quickly. They say it's a spider bite or a rash and treat with antibiotics. But this aggressive strain keeps right on attacking and worsens. It is more aggressive so it attacks the healthy skin too, creating a rash. In very young children it appears as a scald-like rash. In older children, teens and adults it looks like big pimples, almost volcanic in shape.
So you go get diagnosed as having a spider bite and are given antibiotics that don't work, it worsens, you now have a rash and go back to the doctor. Does the doctor figure it out this time? Nope. They say you are having an allergic reaction to the antibiotic and prescribe a new antibiotic, steroids and antihistamines. So you pay more for doctor visits, more for drugs, and go home with more ineffective treatments. By this time you may have progressed enough to have allowed the bacteria to enter your blood stream or bone marrow. You will need a bonescan once they finally figure out what's going on. Especially in children because the bacteria likes the long, growing bones seen in kids.
So now the doctor is worried cause you keep coming back, right? So he orders a culture finally on one or more wounds. *HINT* This should be the FIRST thing they do before prescribing an antibiotic. First to correctly diagnose that it is bacterial and to correctly identify what antibiotics this particular bacteria is susceptible to.
So it comes back from the lab 3 or 4 days later as MRSA/ORSA. It's the hard to kill antibiotic resistant kind of staph infection. We look at the doctor with eyes that say "ok, so it's resistant. so what do we do now?" This makes the doctor uncomfortable so they leave saying the nurse will be in with instructions and they bail out!
If you are lucky and have a decent nurse they will at least tell you something about the bacteria. It might be something like this:
The nurse comes in and says you have this bacteria colonized on your skin now so you have to take precautions. Any openings in your skin, put this ointment on it (bactroban) and keep it covered with a bandage. They don't go much further than that. They don't say what it means for your family members, friends, co-workers, church members, nada. You are often left to find things on the internet if at all. So many things on the internet are written to the level that your average medical professional will say "Huh?" and close the window on the .pdf file.
Well at this point, because of the healthcare-related only MRSA mentality, they assume you got the staph infection AFTER being in and out of healthcare for the original 'spider bite' and 'allergic rash'. It certainly couldn't be their misdiagnosis of something well documented and in the media. So they feel they have saved the day by diagnosing you correctly and sending you on the way without quite saying that you won't ever get better.
12-16-04
There are companies springing up in response to this bacteria. Since it is affecting athletes, it is getting attention!
http://www.metrowestcleangear.com/MainFrame.htm
http://www.cleansportsct.com/
12-07-04
Bonescan was negative! People at Children's Hospital are great. They 'get' it!
There once was a very brave cowboy who was riding a horse when it neared too close to a fence. The young man had a gash taken out of his bare shin.
The young cowboy knew he must not spook his horse, so he quietly and gently rode the animal back to gain help. After twenty or so stitches the young cowboy was well on his way to mending... Until...
08-11-04: Horseback riding accident. Initial wound in Missouri.
08-24-04: Stitches removed Mason, Ohio.
10-29-04: First culture of wound. Not healing right anymore, original wound has taken the shape of the bandage. Told to keep using Triple Antibiotic ointment on the wound with a dressing. Rash behind leg from wound where bandage coban wrap rests.
11-01-04: Follow-up & Keflex 500mg Twice a day. Rash on back has worsened into a wound of it's own. Rash has spread to nearly all extremeties and head and shoulders, not so much on trunk.
11-03-04: Follow-up with doctor to look at wound and rash.
11-05-04: Follow-up another culture and medicine changed to Cleocin 150mg Three times a day.
11-08-04: Follow-up, doctor referred to Infectious Disease Center at Children's Hospital.
11-08-04: Seen by Infectious Disease physicians and fellows, consult with Dermatology. Seen by 9 physicians and fellows. Decide there is an allergy to triple antibiotic ointment causing initial breakdown of the healing wound and spreading rash. Told not to use triple antibiotic or neomycin ointment. Also advised flu shots use neomycin as a preservative.
Told to discontinue Cleocin and just use topical bactroban ointment and lidex cream alternating. Lidex for the allergic reaction/rash and bactroban for the bacteria.