MRSA!?!

I came across these pictures a while back and I wanted to post this mostly for journaling reasons so I don't forget. So bear with me. In the short 5 years of traekon's life he has already had MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) twice! For those of you who have no clue what that is it's a super mutated staff infection. The first time he got it we lived in thatcher and he was only 2 years old. Todd's brother was living with us at the time and ended up getting it somehow. At that same time Traekon had an open wound on his foot. It ended up getting really infected so I took him to the doctor and they tested it. Sure enough it was MRSA. They put him on an antibiotic(at the time there was only a few antibiotics for this infection cause it was so rare) and it got better. Well about a month later he kept complaining about his leg hurting right in his groin area. I thought maybe he had pulled a muscle somehow cause I couldn't see anything. Then one morning he woke up with a ping pong sized ball on his leg. I took him in and they immediately sent me to the ER where they hospitalized him. The very next morning they took him into surgery. They ended up opening his leg, drained the puse, and left his leg open so that they could drain it every morning and scrub it out. OUCH!! It was the hardest week of my life and his. Containing a two year old in a hospital with an iv in his arm for an entire week is not fun. Needless to say he got lots of new fun toys, and many rides on his iv cart around the hospital. After coming home I swore that we would never do that again! Boy was I wrong!




The next MRSA experience went a little different. It was just about a year ago. I'll start from the beginning. The day I brought Ashton home from the hospital(In my defense keep in mind that i have c-sections so I'm a little out of it at this time!) Todd took traekon to the park to ride his bike. He was just learning how to ride without his training wheels so my brilliant husband decided to let him go down the drainage, which looks alot like a sidewalk, but with alot of trash and germs, and who knows what else. Of course he crashes(men don't think sometimes!) Luckily, or so we thought, he ended up with a few bruises and a strawberry on his elbow. I didn't think much of the strawberry, but now looking back I should have scrubbed the heck out of that thing. Remember new baby, sore body, not walking very well! So about a month later sure enough Traekon has this nasty infection on his elbow which I swear just showed up one day. So I took him in and told the pediatrician "he has MRSA on in his elbow". The lady would not believe me and I couldn't convince her otherwise. She sent me home unwillingly with an antibiotic that I knew was not going to work and for my sake took a swab of his elbow. HA two days later she called me back apologizing telling me to bring him in immediately. Wouldn't you know...MRSA! They gave him a shot of the right antibiotics and a perscription. It started clearing up and eventually went away. So this was probably May. I thought for sure I was home free. Not in this story though. August rolls around and Traekon's in the bath. He reaches up to wash his hair and holy cow he has a bump a size of a marble under his arm. AH CRAP! Is all I can say. I take him in and tell them his history and that I know that it's MRSA and that the last time this happened he was in the hospital for a week. Can you guess what happens next....Yep they don't believe me! Doctors should always go with a mothers intuition. But nope they send me to get blood work done on him, and just to be safe send me to a pediatric oncologist. So then I start doubting myself and thinking maybe it is cancer. Talk about being a nervous wreck. Well we meet with the oncologist and he has no clue what it is. I tell him about his past so he puts Traekon on another dose of the MRSA antibiotic and tells me to keep him posted. While all of this is happening Traekon has NO health insurance, because it expired and no one likes to tell me these things so we are paying for all of this out of pocket, ugh! Anyway I take the perscription in to get it filled and because it's so new I fork out...1,000.00 big ones. Talk about a headache! To boot, the antibiotics didn't even work. The lump is now the size of a golf ball. I call to get an appointment with the oncologist and he's out of town. I finally get an appointment with his pediatrician who then refers me to a pediatric surgeon. By the time we get in to see him the bump is no longer a bump, but an actual town with it's own zip code. It was HUGE! Traekon couldn't even put his arm down. I'm completely livid with all doctors because all along i've told them what it is and what they need to do. But does anyone listen to little ol' me...nope! The surgeon takes one look and says "wow why didn't you come in sooner" I could have ripped his sorry little eyes out but he was acutally a good doctor so I didn't. He books an appointment right away. This time around was a little better cause they didn't hospitalize him. So that was a bonus. All they did this time was cut a little slit, drained the puse, and stuffed it with gauze. We had to pull about an inch of gauze each day until it was gone. Gross! Now a year later all is well and now everytime he gets a cut, scrap, or any open wound whatsoever, we scrub it like crazy with hibiclens. Hopefully the MRSA stories are a thing of the past! Oh and we got back on insurance before the surgery, thank goodness!

This is surgery day... Can you believe the size of that thing! Traekon was such a trooper cause he never complained about it even when he couldn't put his arm down.

After surgery with gauze hanging out.