Replies

* Wash your hands: This simple procedure, done properly, remains the best defense. Carry alcohol-based hand sanitizers for times when hand washing isn’t possible.

* Keep personal items personal: Don’t share towels, soap, sheets, razors, clothing or athletic equipment.

* Sanitize linens: If you have a cut or abrasion, wash towels and sheets with hot water and added bleach. Wash gym and athletic clothes after each use.

* Get infections tested: If an infection requires treatment, ask the care provider to take a culture to confirm what bacteria are present before you are given an antibiotic. If you test positive for a staphylococcus (staph) infection, ask that a culture be tested specifically for MRSA in case you need a special antibiotic.

* Use antibiotics appropriately: When you take antibiotics, take all doses even when you start feeling better. Don’t demand antibiotics for viral illnesses; antibiotics don’t work with viruses. Taking too many antibiotics over time could become a detriment because the medication’s effectiveness can be compromised by overuse.

* Use antibacterial products sparingly: Antibacterial soaps and cleaning products probably don’t prevent infections at home and may make these products less effective in hospitals.

* Take precautions in the hospital: Ask all hospital staff and visitors to wash their hands or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer before touching you. Ask care providers to wipe stethoscopes and other equipment with alcohol. Don’t set food or utensils directly on tables or beds. Make sure that intravenous tubes and catheters are inserted under sterile conditions.

I have MRSA, and I might have died from it if I had not sought medical help.

It’s all healed now and since I have no infected areas right now, there is very little chance of me passing it to someone else.

However my life is permanently changed. I can do nothing that will cut, scrap, burn, puncture, or wound me in the least, lest I get infected again. I used to be a classic car restorer and builder, now I have a job where all my years of experience allow me to just answer questions in an environment where I cannot get hurt.

Dealing the life style changes are the worst, but it could have been different, had I waited a week longer before I got help I might have lost my right leg from above the knee, or even my life like that woman in Texas that caught MRSA in Jail while spending time there for parking tickets and was refused medication.

MRSA kills 37 out of 100 Americans that get infected with it. If I break out again I have a one and three chance of dying.

By the way 93 million Americans have the bug that causes MRSA, that doesn’t mean you are infected with it, it means you can infect someone else or yourself with it, if you are not careful.

I have to live careful from here on out.

let's stop right there......visitors come and go into pts rooms, use their bathrooms, eat their food, use their cups, cough on them, lie in bed with them, lie in the clean bed next to them, bring sneezing little kids in, and somehow, germs are NOT going to be passed along?.....

hate to tell you all but if a lot of people just got tested randomly all sorts of germs would be found on their skin and in their noses....

we have overly used antibiotics in this country and others from birth on and we wonder why we have resistant organisms....then we have a whole group of people that do not take the full required prescription of an antibiotic, because they are feeling "better...and there are those who "lend" some antibiotic pills to a friend because that friend is sick and a couple of antibiotic pills will "help"...

if there are superbugs growing , I think the general populace along with the health establishment can share equal responsibility.....

of course I am old school.....