I’ve been away from the crochet for awhile now. The everyday grind of life has taken me astray. September is a busy month and I find myself focusing solely on work (school that is); crochet is few and far between then. I fully expected to be back in the loop by October, but a new set of challenges has reared its ugly head.
Last Tuesday, my step-father went into the hospital quite suddenly and very much reluctantly, I might add. While out at dinner on Sunday night, his whole left hand blew up like a balloon. It looked like someone cut off his circulation and then inflated his hand, specifically his thumb. It tripled in size. No lie. He’d been down that road before, five times in fact, with the last incident being over two years ago and occurring on his leg. Both he and the doctors thought the problem was solved.
After a visit to the emergency room where it was improperly diagnosed and treated, he went to the doctor on Tuesday (who by the way shares the same parking lot with the local hospital). Within minutes he was ushered over to the emergency room and admitted. Tests were taken and a it was determined that it was indeed another case of . His sixth in less than 4 years.
MRSA is a superbug. The “S” stands for staphylococcus as it’s a relative of a staph infection. His variety is the CA-MRSA variety, meaning “community acquired.” That’s right. He didn’t get it from going to a hospital (HA-MRSA) and hanging around sick people. It entered his body in the wide-open outdoors where he works every day for his own construction business. He had a very small cut on his thumb and it found its way in. The death rate of those affected is 34% within 30 days, so this is serious stuff. It doesn’t help matters that he’s already shown resistance to the common medication avenues including vancomycin and teicoplanin.
In this scenario, he had to be operated on because the virus had taken over the entire thumb rendering it useless. The operation was last Wednesday and it was a success. They basically took out all the infected tissue, which left him with a lot less of a thumb (enough said!). I visited him in the hospital before and after the surgery, but had to dress in a plastic gown and plastic gloves the whole time. I say this to emphasize the seriousness of this infection. Furthermore, he wasn’t allowed to leave his hospital room unless going for a test. I felt so bad. This is a man who is active. He never takes a vacation and doesn’t tend to sit around. Spending days in the hospital was pure torture!
His regular doctor, the surgeon, and the disease specialist from the county all said he could have lost his thumb or his hand had he not gone into the hospital when he did. And they initially talked about a skin graf, but it’s looking like he might not need it since it’s healing nicely.
And while all this was going on, he had some blood work done which initially caused him a big scare (this is a man who rarely cries but found himself chocked up). He was more concerned about finding red blood cells where they shouldn’t be more so than the surgery. Luckily, after the surgery, the doctor told him he was an otherwise healthy man. THANK HEAVENS.
Currently, there is , and how to overuse of medications is to blame. There was also talk about it on the radio yesterday and a disease specialist had stated that staph infections are becoming more of an epidemic than the AIDS virus in the United States. Crazy, right? They are emphasizing proper hygiene and sanitation to help combat the problems.
I know I, for one, will be getting myself some good hand sanitizer and using it more often, especially when at school where I teach 900 students throughout the year. They already get me sick enough with basic colds!
