Anyone here dealt with MRSA?

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ChiSandy
ChiSandy Member Posts: 12,133
edited June 2016 in Life After Breast Cancer

So I had a dysplastic nevus on my back biopsied (twice, since she needed clean margins) by my dermatologist three weeks ago. Good news is that it's not melanoma (pre-malignant) and she got clean margins. Bad news is that what appeared to be yellow minor drainage was confirmed by culture today to be MRSA. No other symptoms--not red, hot, or painful and no fever. Am on the first of 14 days of doxycycline (sulfa-allergic). Derm is talking about washing my clothes and bedding in bleach--WTF??? None of what I wear except a few cotton panties is bleachable. We have a king-sized bed and I have my favorite “blankie" (a twin size tropical-weight down comforter, which can't be washed very often, much less daily). We already use bath and hair towels & washcloths once and then put them in the hamper, and I have started drying my hands with paper towels and patting my face dry with a cotton pad. It's been three weeks of daily bandage changes, and I have no idea which person who does my changes (DH, housekeeper or the nurse at the Immediate Care Center around the corner--I can't reach the dang thing) gave me MRSA--or whether it was a skin colony I already had but didn't show up on my nasal swab before my lumpectomy, or if I even caught it from my cats (who don't get anywhere near the wound).

Has anyone here successfully dealt with this? It's not even as purulent (knock wood) as the typical MRSA zit or sore. Are the above precautions overreactions? (Have switched, per today's instructions from the derm, to washing the wound with sterile gauze and Hibiclens, and no longer lubing it with vaseline as previously directed. More precisely, having the wound washed).

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  • marijen
    marijen Member Posts: 3,731
    edited August 2016

    antibiotic-resistant infection, MRSA

    Date:
    May 5, 2007
    Source:
    University of Manchester
    Summary:
    Medical researchers are ridding diabetic patients of the superbug MRSA -- by treating their foot ulcers with maggots. The scientists used green bottle fly larvae to treat 13 diabetic patients whose foot ulcers were contaminated with MRSA and found all but one were cured within a mean period of three weeks, much quicker than the 28-week duration for the conventional treatment.

    Sciencedaily.com
  • Blessings2011
    Blessings2011 Member Posts: 4,276
    edited June 2016

    ChiSandy - no, I have not personally had MRSA. But many family members and friends have had it, many of them while in the hospital. In fact, one of the scariest words you hear when someone is hospitalized is "MRSA."

    However, the reality is that MRSA is actually pretty common. According to the CDC, 1 in 3 people have staph in their nose, and 2 in 100 people actually carry MRSA without any symptoms.

    In our house, we must use Universal Precautions due to my husband's lack of immune system, completely destroyed intentionally by an experimental drug. One thing we rely on is Lysol Disinfectant Spray (among a boatload of other stuff.)

    According to the can, Lysol Spray will kill MRSA in ten minutes (meaning the surface has to remain wet for ten minutes.) The only thing it says about fabrics is do not use on leather or rayon fabric. So perhaps this might be a way to disinfect that comforter or other specific parts of clothing besides bleaching and washing in hot water.

    I do use it on our mattresses when I change the sheets, and I spray all the hard touchable surfaces in the house. (We get it in bulk at Costco...) We even spray the soles of our shoes before entering the house. (Can't bend over far enough to take them off!)

    DH and I do our laundry separately. Like you, we use paper towels. (Right now, he has his own bathroom and bedroom, to stay safe.)

    If you do not share your clothes with anyone, I'm wondering how important it is to bleach them....and the CDC says nothing about bleaching linens. http://www.cdc.gov/mrsa/community/ It sounds like they rely on hot water and a hot clothes dryer.

    Perhaps someone else will come along and post, who has had personal experience with MRSA.

    I'm so sorry you are dealing with not only a wound, but a complete upheaval of your cleaning routine!

    Wishing you a speedy recovery....

  • BarredOwl
    BarredOwl Member Posts: 2,433
    edited June 2016

    Hi ChiSandy:

    Good news on the pathology! Hoping the antibiotics and other measures defeat these bacteria, so you can avoid Marijen's proposed intervention!

    BarredOwl

  • marijen
    marijen Member Posts: 3,731
    edited August 2016

    Barred Owl - very funny!

    So hospitals are putting in copper countertops because copper kills MRSA.


    http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Research_270/Copper-Kills-the-Superbug-MRSA_printer.shtml

  • ChiSandy
    ChiSandy Member Posts: 12,133
    edited June 2016

    Copper sounds promising, but doesn’t it also promote tumor cell growth?

    Not only don’t I share clothes with anyone, I have my own closet and clothes racks. And we already buy Lysol Spray, so I might spray the comforter and sheets with the “fresh linen” scent. Bob thinks my derm is overreacting and that treatment should be topical rather than oral antibiotics. But now that I started them I should finish the whole course. Anyway, I’m not sure how amenable Chico’s Travelers and Zenergy stuff will be to hot water and hot dryers. Ditto my good bras and nightwear. Time to stock up on ugly oversized plain white tees and white cotton bras that don’t support me. Ugh.

    As to the maggots, they are a rather time-honored remedy for diabetic skin ulcers. Eeeew, anyway. I’m not getting any suppuration or necrosis--just that the line of the incision and the suture marks are bright red. (But so did my knee replacement wounds after the staples came out). The only other redness is a mild allergic reaction to the adhesive on a waterproof bandage, and since it’s counterproductive to use a steroid onitment if i’m fighting an infection (and I’m temporarily d.c.-ing my Nasacort till this blows over), I switched to bandages for sensitive skin. The derm says I needn’t keep the dressing dry in the shower--the water will help the Hibiclens do its thing--so I can put away the Tegaderms for now. Tomorrow, I need to buy more of those sensitive-skin large bandages and a package of disposable gloves--clear foodservice ones are okay too.

    On top of everything else, I lost my glasses today. En route home from my friend’s funeral, I stopped at Mariano’s to buy some groceries Whole Foods doesn’t carry. When heading out of the store, I pulled my shades out of their pocket on the side of my purse and replaced them with my glasses--or so I thought. Got home, took off my sunglasses, reached for my glasses....and.....empty pocket. Went out to the car with a flashlight--did they fall out of the purse? Nope. Called Mariano’s--nobody turned in a pair of glasses. By then I’m sure someone had run over them in the parking lot. I loved them--peach tortoise frames, Transitions and progressive lenses, not big and geeky like current fashion but still more fashionable than my plain rimless (which don’t cover up my dark circles and eye bags). I’d go to Lens Crafters, but our ophthalmologist down on the S.Side not only refracts more accurately but also has been keeping tabs on my cataracts for 10 years and can tell me if it’s time to get those fixed too. I know I need a much stronger reading prescription, since I have to enlarge the font on my screen; and I’m squinting my way through my “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” crossword book.

  • Jelson
    Jelson Member Posts: 1,535
    edited June 2016

    stay out of the sun!!!! my husband's reaction to sun while on doxycycline was much worse than the pain he endured from the lyme disease for which he was being treated.

  • octogirl
    octogirl Member Posts: 2,804
    edited June 2016

    Sandy, so sorry to hear this.....I have not had MRSA personally but several years ago (actually, more than several, more like seven or eight...) hubby had it and was hospitalized twice...he had a skin reaction on much of his lower leg.

    Funny thing is, while he was in isolation in the hospital, in a private room, I don't remember getting any instructions at all about treatment of linens and clothes at home, and am fairly certain I took no special precautions (though I imagine I washed sheets and towels)...But I can't say that standards haven't changed or that perhaps I didn't get (or hear) some instructions I should have gotten. I will say that he has remained vulnerable to skin infections and problems in the same area (leg) and has gotten cellulitis in the same area since them.

    Sending good thoughts your way...

  • ChiSandy
    ChiSandy Member Posts: 12,133
    edited June 2016

    kayb, I found the book in the “Games & Puzzles” section of an indie bookstore. Worth every penny.

    Derm messaged me back--she says it’s superficial and the main precautions I need to take are the doxy, using Hibiclens at bandage changes (and wearing gloves--clean but not nec. sterile), and not sharing towels & washcloths--and laundering and drying them on “hot.”

    I have a sort of Dracula attitude toward sunlight--I am not even allowed near a window before 4 pm without sunscreen. There was no sun warning on the instruction sheet with my Rx--just “take with food & 8 oz.of water and remain upright for an hour.” So far so good.

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