Why is it that we haven’t heard much about this? I’ll tell you why - there’s no victimhood club associated with this killer bug. This bug attacks everyone equally. There also isn’t a whole lot the average person can do to protect themself aside from locking yourself away from society whereas AIDS is pretty much preventable by the affected individual. But AIDS has become the disease du jour for all the Hollyweird hop on the bandwagon because they can’t think supporters.

I wrote about my experience with this superbug and got some interesting anecdotal stories in the comments. This is an aggressive bug which moves to the dangerous level within a few days. They say it’s boil-like but it looks more like a very small pimple with the area becoming red on the surface, it’s under the surface that is really frightening. For me, one of the boils had a red diameter of about 6 inches. Under the skin it was hard to a depth of 5 inches - it essentially was eating away my inards. That was within 4 days I think. Read these comments:

my brother was infected with msra last summer too. he got it from camp. unfortunatly his didn’t fare so well. he was in icu for 6 months and had to have multiple surguries as it filled his lungs and surrounded his liver. even today he still has trouble breathing and is now unable to play sports. at the time he got the infection- noone here had ever seen it (his was the first case here). now there have been several cases but still none this bad. this stuff is serious and dangerous.

Comment by melissa — June 25, 2007

Hello, I was infected with MRSA about 2 months ago, i had a huge abscess on my stomach, the infection spread like wildfire within 2 days, i had to have surgery on my stomach to remove all of the infection, it had gone very deep close to my lungs within those 2 days, my doctor believed i came in contact with it while i was in the hospital delivering my baby when i had a catheder placed. everyone please be careful this is a nasty infection!!

Comment by Jen — June 25, 2007

My husband had his leg amputated below the knee in October and was givin MRSA at that time. It is now June and he’s still trying to heal. It was so bad they almost had to take his knee. This is more than scary to think you go in to get fixed and come out with this. He’s constantly in and out of the hospital and has wound center treatments 5 days a week. Hospitals need to do something about this. It doesn’t do anyone any good to come home with this nightmare!!

Comment by Kelli — June 25, 2007

Hi My sister contacted this infection MRSA while in the hospital for a heart valve replacement. She was in the hospital for SIX MONTHS and in the ICU most of the time and then LTAC unit(long term acute care). MRSA was in her lungs and caused pneumonia over and over again. After spending each day with her and watching I can understand how it is passed from patient to patient. We almost lost her several different times. Now she is finally home and rehabing. Hospitals are not safe places to be!!!!!!! But they could be, and some have shown that with persistent care MRSA can be controlled and almost eliminated completely. So I ask myself why Drs. are against these extra precautionary measures????? Perhaps we all need to ask the same questions.

Comment by Karen — June 25, 2007

Drug-Resistant Staph Germ’s Toll Is Higher Than Thought

A dangerous germ that has been spreading around the country causes more life-threatening infections than public health authorities had thought and is killing more people in the United States each year than the AIDS virus, federal health officials reported yesterday.

The microbe, a strain of a once innocuous staph bacterium that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics, is responsible for more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated.

snip….MRSA, which is spread by casual contact, rapidly turns minor abscesses and other skin infections into serious health problems, including painful, disfiguring “necrotizing” abscesses that eat away tissue. The infections can often still be treated by lancing and draining sores and quickly administering other antibiotics, such as bactrim. But in some cases the microbe gets into the lungs, causing unusually serious pneumonia, or spreads into bone, vital organs and the bloodstream, triggering life-threatening complications. Those patients must be hospitalized and given intensive care, including intravenous antibiotics such as vancomycin.

In the new study, Fridkin and his colleagues analyzed data collected in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Tennessee, identifying 5,287 cases of invasive MRSA infection and 988 deaths in 2005. The researchers calculated that MRSA was striking 31.8 out of every 100,000 Americans, which translates to 94,360 cases and 18,650 deaths nationwide. In comparison, complications from the AIDS virus killed about 12,500 Americans in 2005.

“This indicates these life-threatening MRSA infections are much more common than we had thought,” Fridkin said.

In fact, the estimate makes MRSA much more common than flesh-eating strep infections, bacterial pneumonia and meningitis combined, Bancroft noted.

“These are some of the most dreaded invasive bacterial diseases out there,” she said. “This is clearly a very big deal.”

I wonder when there will be concert for MRSA? Don’t think I’ll hold my breath.

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