Originally Posted by anhailla

oh no..
The MRSA in her blood? what do you mean by very ill? Are the treatments for the MRSA working?

Originally Posted by Refuge51

She had to be on antibiotic iv therapy for a week in the hospital. Then she was sent home with one called R....something. Makes your tears and pee red and they also give it for tb. The other was Bactrim.
She's on Bactrim now because this last time on Sunday night, her stomach which had a hard knot in it, burst open and she felt a little better because it was draining again. Monday the doctor took a swab and we'll find out probably tomorrow if she should change medications. The infectious disease specialist said the MRSA is hiding and if she gets really ill, they may need to remove the screen it's behind. If they do, the MRSA may spread.
He did advise her to lose some weight so he can do the surgery safely.

Originally Posted by anhailla

oh no..
The MRSA in her blood? what do you mean by very ill? Are the treatments for the MRSA working?

Originally Posted by Carnac

We have a new strain here in my area. This is even vancomycin resistant, this is a new mutation. It is in all the high schools.

Another horror story, my sister in Oregon has a coworker. She thought she had an ingrown hair down in her perineal area somewhere, and it was this new strain of MRSA. They cut her wide open to debride it. This was a month ago. She is still in a nursing home, because the dressing changes are that painful.

Err. MRSA has been around as long as I have been in medical records, but this is a new mutation, a new strain. Hate to hear that a new strain of streptococcus has surfaced in Canada. It is the antibiotics in food and the overuse of prescribed antibiotics.

Hope you sis fares well, Ref.

Originally Posted by zimmy61

Superbug surfaces in Canada

UNNATI GANDHI

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

November 7, 2007 at 10:05 PM EST

TORONTO — A new and ominous strain of the bacterium that causes ear infections in children is emerging in Canada, one that is resistant to every antibiotic approved to treat the common illness.

The multi-drug-resistant 19A sub-strain of pneumococcus has already been diagnosed in parts of the United States, where doctors have had to resort to administering an antibiotic typically used to treat adults and one that is not approved for use in children.

A 14-month-old child being treated at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto may be the first person in this province to have been infected by the superstrain.

The child was healthy, fully vaccinated and had not travelled, but doctors believe the child picked the strain up in the community and developed a severe case of bacterial meningitis, a serious infection of the fluid around the spinal cord and brain that can lead to deafness and neurological damage. The child remains in hospital and is still undergoing treatment, said Upton Allen, an infectious disease specialist at the hospital.

While Dr. Allen and other experts are confident that the superstrain is not a cause for alarm for the general public, they are calling for closer surveillance.

As soon as the bug was confirmed to be resistant to the standard antibiotics used to treat children with ear infections, a group of eight high-profile infectious disease experts in Ontario, including Donald Low and Allison McGeer, wrote an internal memo to the province's acting chief medical officer of health, David Williams, and recommended an immediate provincewide strategy to monitor how the bug is developing and mutating.

“This case is of particular concern,” they write, “[because] this is an unusually resistant S. pneumoniae isolate causing invasive disease in a previously healthy fully vaccinated child … [and] the patient did not have a travel history suggesting that this isolate is circulating in the Toronto region.”

In an interview last night, Dr. Williams said that physicians have been monitoring similar resistant subtypes of this strain for the past year after some cases emerged in British Columbia. “At this stage, we are monitoring and collecting more information on this case in particular and then we'll prepare an update for physicians to be alert to the fact that these organisms are out there, and to carry out the proper sampling and testing accordingly.”

Janet Casey, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center discovered this new strain with her colleague Michael Pichichero and published a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month.

“It's a concern for us because it's so resistant to antibiotics. When you have a bacteria that you don't have an antibiotic to treat, that means that essentially that infection can run rampant,” Dr. Casey said.

“It isn't a public health concern from the standpoint of influenza, which spreads easily from child to child and from person to person.”

She said parents should be looking out for ear infections in their children that aren't going away with the use of prescribed antibiotics.

A childhood vaccine that protects against many strains of pneumococcal infection is still very powerful, she said, and should continue to be given to children. But while that vaccine doesn't protect against this particular strain, a reformulated version is expected in a few years.

Until then, doctors will have to remain vigilant, she said.

With reports from Avis Favaro and Elizabeth St. Philip

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...andHealth/home

Originally Posted by chambers92

It's scary how many people know of someone who has MRSA. Considering most people didn't even know about it until recently.

Ref, I hope your sister heals quickly.

Originally Posted by Refuge51

She has! She's doing really great..back to her normal argumentative self. dance

Originally Posted by chambers92

That's great news ref. Except of course the agumentative part .

Is she still going to work with mentally challenged adults? I worked with that population for a while and at the time, the one thing you had to watch out for was Hep B.

It's weird, I have the anti bodies to Hep B but have never had the disease as far as I know. I did have Hep A, years ago. My doc initially assumed I had the anti bodies because of the vaccine which I never had.. The other explanation was that I must have been exposed to it because of the work I did..