MRSA

[momma503]

Just when you think things can't get worse, they do. My husband recently lost his job. With it went our medical insurance. We applied for state assistance and medicaid but those things take a while to get processed and we just have to wait for all that to come through. Normally, it wouldn't be a big deal. However, just as sure as you lose your health insurance, something catastrophic is bound to happen.

My husband been diagnosed with MRSA. It stands for methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus.  In a nutshell, drug resistant staph infection. How he got it we don't know. Could be from working in a landfill, could be from a Walmart shopping cart... who knows. Anyway, it popped up looking like an ingrown hair or a pimple on his leg. The little bump grew and redness and swelling spread out around the bump, which was now the size of a quarter. We went to the doctor, they thought it was a brown recluse spider bite. Gave him antibiotics and sent him home. They didn't culture the site (stupid). He took the meds and it went away. 4 days later he had 4 more of those sores in various places on his body. Now there's no way he's being eaten alive by spiders when no one else in the house has a mark. So now we were concerned. The first one took 2 weeks to progress. These new ones were progressing in a matter of hours and more were popping up. We had insurance when the first one showed up and he was treated. Now there's no insurance and he is so sick it's unbelievable. We went to the ER. They said they believe it to be MRSA but they don't want to admit him, they just want to give him more meds and send him home. WTF??? He should be hospitalized and somewhat quarantined! This stuff spreads from person to person faster than a cold virus! And is spread the same way... sneezing or coughing into your hand and touching someone or something, sharing a hand towel, clothing, BED SHEETS, anything that a person with MRSA touches becones a point of contact for someone else to pick it up! Well, the meds they use to treat MRSA are Sulfa based drugs (Bactrim) and he's allergic. The only other option is IV antibiotics, which would require hospitalization. No insurance, no hospital room. I don't care what ANYONE says, you are treated like less of a person if you're uninsured. Like some derelict off the street. They use the "treat and release" approach and hope you don't die in the meantime. So here's my husband lying in an ER bed, in tears because he's so sick he thinks he's going to die right there. But I digress... (I'm still pissed off about the whole ER thing but that's another story)

I read up on MRSA. It's wicked bad stuff if you have the misfortune to get it. It's not your garden variety staph infection. It doesn't respond to antibiotics, except for 2 or 3. The one it responds to best is Sulfa and it's also very cheap (as in on the $4 list). If you're allergic like we are, you're pretty much screwed unless you have a prescription plan. It starts out looking like a pimple or mosquito bite. It itches, then burns, starts to grow in diameter. The area becomes rigid and painful. It may or may not ooze. They strongly urge you NOT to squeeze it or attempt to drain it yourself because it can push the infection deeper into your flesh and possibly into the bloodstream, whereby it runs amok and could kill you quickly. It develops an area of redness around it which will keep getting bigger and bigger. It kinda looks like a bad case of excema or psoriasis. It may only appear in one spot but the doctors say it is very common to have multiple sites of infection. It spreads so fast. In fact, my husband had 3 new sores show up while we were in the ER waiting for the doctor to come in! MRSA is also accompanied by flu-like symptoms: fever, chills, hot/cold flashes, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, all that fun stuff. He was experiencing everything but puking and the runs. This all went south in less than 24 hours. He was perfectly fine one day and the next morning he was in the hospital with multiple sores and so sick you can't believe. And if you are diagnosed with MRSA, they say you don't just take some meds and it's gone. He is now on his second round of treatment and it may not be his last. The say it's a battle to get it out of your system once it's in. Kind of like that pain in the ass relative who pops in unannounced and then won't leave! Only difference... the relative probably won't kill you if they stay.

We are facing one hell of a fight here and I don't know how we're gonna afford the meds, since neither of us has a job right now. We were hoping he would be admitted because he could get on medication through an IV and it would start working immediately, instead of waiting 2 days for oral meds to kick in. We could also get help with the costs if it was inpatient. Lots of hospitals offer financial assistance to uninsured patients. But they're more concerned about their bottom line and so it's cheaper for them to send an uninsured patient home with a prescription. Well, it's not cheaper for people like us when they want to give us meds that cost $150, and those are the CHEAP ones! Yeah, Levaquin (one of the alternatives to Bactrim) is anywhere from $130-$150 per scrip depending on what pharmacy you go to. There is no generic, it's not on Walmart's $4 list. So when you don't even have that much money in your bank account, what do you do? It's no wonder people leave the ER and die.

I have pictures of what it starts out looking like. Believe me, it gets MUCH worse than these.

This one was on his right calf. The whole site was about as big around as a can of pop (soda to those of you not from southwest PA). We caught it before it really had a chance to get bad.

This next one was on the front of his thigh and you can see where they circled it. That spot inside the circle was about the size of a quarter at the time I took this photo. Before it was all said and done, the whole site was about the size of a salad plate. It left a scar and the whole area is now discolored (sort of purplish) and sunken in a little.

The best thing to prevent this mess is thorough and consistent hand washing - after using the bathroom, after you use a shopping cart, stuff you would wash your hands for anyway or stuff you would do to ward off spreading a cold virus. I know they say plain old soap and water is good enough and even preferable anymore, but keeping a bottle of Purell and some Lysol on hand isn't a bad idea either. I hope this is helpful and I hope no one reading this ever has to go through this miserable experience.