Mrsa - Ponder,TX

the best way to defeat MRSA is good, old fashioned common sense. keep cuts/abrasions clean and COVERED!!! do NOT put peroxide on a wound that is not fresh, this will dissolve the scab(aka protection). if a wound looks red or feverish, get to the DR, do NOT wait. if your child suddenly has a "spider bite", get to a DR - most MRSA start off as a boil that looks like a spider bite. MOST MOST MOST MRSA infections, when caught and treated EARLY, are NOT horribly dangerous. if someone in your household has a staph infection, or the methicillin resistant strain of staph, don't share towels, wash all towels after every use, i'd scrub the tub after the infected person used it, and have the entire household cleanse with hibaclens(i may have butchered that in the spelling). i wouldn't lose sleep over the possibility of MRSA, just use good hygiene, common sense, and get to a DR if you suspect something.

Who is Bryce? I'm new here and I dont know the story

Hi Heather,

This is Glenda and my son Bryce is the sick child you are referring to. We have been asking for eight days now how this happened and honestly, there is no answer. I will tell you how it manifested and what the doctors say about it. Last Friday night, Bryce woke in the middle of the night with a fever. I was at an overnight church retreat so my husband gave him tylenol and put him back in the bed. Saturday, when I got back home, he still had a fever and was complaining that his shoulder hurt. The fever was still there Sunday and he had mild vomiting. We had already decided that we needed to call his pedi Monday morning. At about 1:00 Monday morning (Bryce and I were sleeping together on an air mattress in the living room), he woke and said he had to go potty. He could barely walk to the bathroom. At 3:30, he woke again and this time when I stood him up off the mattress, he just collapsed to the floor. I immediately scooped him up and woke my husband and told him something was terribly wrong. He got dressed quickly and rushed him to Denton Regional Medical Center. It wasn't long before they felt he needed to be taken by ambulance to Children's in Dallas because they just weren't sure what it was. After we arrived here, he spent about 8 hours in the ER being treated but was quickly going down hill. At about 4:00, they moved him to ICU where he had to be intebated and sedated. The rest is too long to write about but the bottom line I wanted to make is he had no cuts or scrapes and no boils to indicate what we were dealing with.
The doctors explained to us that 1/3 of the population walks around daily with MRSA on their skin or in their nose. Health care workers are even higher. For most, it never presents a problem but if your immune system becomes compromised, it can invade quickly as it did with Bryce. The only guess they can make is he may have hurt his shoulder somehow and had some kind of inflammation that the MRSA just pounced on. They call it just bad luck. I have asked them how we keep this from happening again and they all said, wash your hands and don't pick your nose or if you pick your nose, wash your hands :-) I understand your fear, it's scary to know there are "superbugs" out there like this. It has completely thrown our lives and family into turmoil, I would have never believed this was possible, but it is a real reality.
We are on day nine and still dealing with a critical situation. His doctor told me yesterday that if Bryce survives this, he will be a miracle child because children don't come in here as infected as he is and survive. But that's what we're holding out for - a miracle.
Thank you to you and everyone that has been concerned and shown such compassion and care for our Bryce. I wish I had some way to post a picture here so all of you could see the sweet face you're praying for.
Glenda

Heather, staph is not a fun thing. My son has had it about 5 or 6 times now. He was hospitalized for it at 8 mos. old. We were in for 3 days and on IV antibiotics, then they had to lance it open and we had to go to the dr. every day for a week to have it packed and repacked to absorb the rest of the infection. My advice for avoiding it....just normal common sense things. Wash your hands and I do keep hand sanitizer with me. We can't keep our kids in a bubble. I honestly think that my son got it from my dad. Well I'm not going to keep him from my dad, so we just deal with it. When he got it real bad, I caught it early because he had already had it once or twice before. You'll know within 24 to 48 hours if the antibiotics that the dr. gives you are going to work. After the hospital visit, he got it again along with pneumonia, we sat in the ER half the night with that. I feel so sorry for little Bryce and his family. Staph is something that we all have, it's just a matter of if your body can fight it off and not get the bad kind. I still worry constantly about him getting it again. He hasn't had it, (knock on wood) for a while.
My sons started out looking like a little pimple that I wanted to pop, by the next day it was a red bump (boil). You can just touch it and feel the heat and soreness. My son always seemed to get them around his diaper area. The bad one was on his butt cheek. If you see anything like that, get to the dr. immediately so they can get it treated. Hope this helps a little.