The worst Halloween scare
Posted
October 31, 2007 at
9:05 am by
Prescott
Forget the ghouls, goblins and witches. I read something in the local paper this morning that would strike a much larger fear into a parent’s heart — a kid at my son’s school has been diagnosed with the “super bug”, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as a staph infection. As the name implies, it’s antibiotic resistant, highly contagious, and in some cases fatal. So, yeah, just the kind of thing you want to read as you’re sending your kid out the door. And hello, school administration, why am I reading about this in the paper? Shouldn’t there be some sort of phone tree system to alert parents of such things?
Supposedly the best way to prevent the spread of MRSA is good hygiene and diligent hand washing. That sure makes me feel better since we all know how good young kids — especially boys — are at keeping clean, right? One way us parents can help is to keep bandages on open wounds. Here’s a MRSA fact sheet from the CDC that will either ease your mind or, if you’re an online-enabled hypochondriac like me, make things worse…
Tags: Health, methicillin-resistant-Staphylococcus-aureus, mrsa, staph, super-bug |
4 Responses to “The worst Halloween scare”
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1. Cara said:
October 31, 2007 @ 12:37 pm
This might make you feel better. Both my husband and my 2 year old son currently have this. This is my husband’s second bout of it since July.
I keep hearing about how it’s potentially fatal, and I’m sure it is, but for us it hasn’t been a big deal. I think the cases where it was fatal where when it wasn’t diagnosed for a long time.
On both my husband and my son, it started out as a little bump that just looked like an ant bite or a pimple. My husband’s was on his chest and my son’s was around his hip bone. My husband’s was initally diagnosed as a spider bite (which I’ve heard is a really common misdiagnosis), but thankfully our doctor did a blood culture just to be on the safe side and it tested positive for MRSA. The thing that differentiated it from any other normal little blemish that you might get was that it got worse quickly (doubled in size in 2 days) and it hurt much more than a normal blemish would. My son wouldn’t let me touch it at all.
Usually, a sulfa antibiotic is prescribed, but unfortunately both my husband and son are allergic to sulfa so they have to take a different antibiotic. Everyone in the house has to bathe with Hibiclense surgical soap and we have to put this Bactriban ointment in our nostrils and on our fingernails twice a day. We have antibacterial gel in every room in the house and use it obsessively.
So yeah, it’s a pain, but my husband and son aren’t deathly ill or anything. They don’t even feel bad.
So I tend to think that the horror stories that I’ve read about having to have these horrible wounds drained at the doctor every day and people falling deathly ill are because people either let it go too long before getting it checked out, were misdiagnosed at first or had delicate immune systems to begin with.
I’m not trying to minimize it, but I think that the media is playing up the fear aspect a little too much to scare everyone. Remember the great “black mold” scare in the early 2000’s?
2. Rita said:
October 31, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
That’s what my dad had several years back. He caught it after his second heart operation and his entire chest was just filled with it. He has no sternum now, because it was in the area where they crack that to do the operation and it just ate away at the bone.
Basically, stay healthy. A strong immune system is the best defense. Keep clean. Use bleach on suspiscious areas, not the “antibacterial” stuff. You know how the antibacterial stuff says it kils 99.99% of all germs? Guess that that .01% they don’t is–MRSA.
I don’t know, since it’s there at the school, if my kid had sniffles or a scratchy throat, I’d be keeping them home. I mean, realistically, kids who are not immunocompromised and don’t have big gaping wounds, really *should* be able to fight it off without too much worry of….death…but, I love my kids, so I’d err on the side of caution.
3. Aaron said:
November 1, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
I heard a report just this morning about a kid in a school district near ours. The school had decided to let the kid come back to classes. I’m VERY glad that he doesn’t go to school with my kids but it makes me wonder how much they get exposed to that the school doesn’t tell us about.
4. friend said:
May 5, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
Actually, MRSA is NOT highly contagious. Staph lives in and on all of us. What has made this bug sooo strong is over zealous parent’s demanding antibiotics when your kid doesn’t need it…and physicians writing the scripts to freely.
Yes, it is more abundant, especially in areas where sweaty highschool kids congregate. The best advice, is what we have been taught forever, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. And don’t share stuff. If you do have a wound, keep it clean and covered. The most likely place to come in contact with MRSA is in any hospital. In fact ALL hospitals have active MRSA….the goal is to keep it under control…but you can get rid of it. If you get a MRSA, you will know it…starts like a pimple, and turns into a nasty boil very fast. Make sure to get immediate medical attention. And BTW, it is a booger to get rid of.