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…

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