fyi--MRSA has been present in the U.S. for at least 20 years. I can recall special hospital precautions for MRSA back in the early '80s.
They inserted an IV in his arm and left it there. Another tube into his knee connected to a portable vacuum pump.
The IV ran all the way into his chest.
He had to give himself meds through the IV several times a day for one month. Then on pills that cost $1800.
He is to find out shortly whether the infection is gone.
The Dr. said his type of staph wasn't the real bad one either.
I think farms use 65% of all antibiotics. They don't clean the animals or anything, they just cram them into ridiculously small cages where the animals can't even turn around, leave the animal to wallow in filth, and pump them full of antibiotics in hope the animal doesn't get sick & die.
This is one of the few areas where I support government intervention... we're going back to the pre-antibiotics days when it was rare to survive broken legs because of infection. Hello typhoid!
This article caught my eye for one specific reason. Last summer my son, who was working on a fishing boat, had two things happen.
One: In working with the shrimp and other fish, he had small cuts on his hands which became infected with Staph. This is common among fisherman and he wasn't worried about it.
Two: While trying to secure parts of the boat during a storm, he pulled the groin muscles.
Now these two things don't seem related, but while he was here visiting (he had plans to head for Seattle and a job in the industry out there), his groin injury seems to get worse while his hands had cleared up.
It got to the point where he was forced by me to go to the emergency room. They initially thought that he was having a heart attack (he's 36) but after taking blood work it was found that the staph had travelled to the hip joint.
He had immediate surgery to scrap out the joint and was infused with massive amounts of antibiodics. While in the hospital, he had two other surgeries to scrap the bone and joint. He had a shunt placed into his chest over the heart area because they also thought the infection had traveled to his heart. (Thank GOD, it didn't). The antibiodics he was given were the strongest on the market.
He was in the hospital for a month. After coming home, he found that he could not continue on to Seattle so went back to Key West and working on the fishing boats again. Within one month, they thought that the infection had returned - scared us both silly! The doctors told him he should find another field in the industry to work in.
He has had only one other reoccurence of the infection and luckily they didn't have to operate a fourth time. There is always the posibility that it will come back and he may not be so lucky next time.
One thing of interest has stood out in my mind. The doctor told him that Staph travels to the weakess point in your body.