Protecting your family against MRSA - Correct Diagnosis is Priority #1

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You may have heard about MRSA, you may even know someone who has had an MRSA infection, but what you may not know is how to protect yourself or your family from the deadly infectious staph or what to do if you think you have contracted it. I had no idea what MRSA was or how aggressive it can be until January of 2005 when my 15 year old daughter was misdiagnosed with having chicken pox. We returned to the doctor 2 days later when the standard antibiotics he prescribed were doing nothing to help the infected sores she had, (he said the sores were infected from her scratching them.) in fact they had spread and more than doubled in size. It was then that he took a culture of one of the sores and made us an appointment with a specialist of infectious disease. The specialist explained to us about community aquired MRSA and how this type of staph usually colonizes on the body and then waits for an opening, break, or cut on the skin to enter and begin breaking down the tissue. From the culture our family physician had taken, they were able to determine not only what strain of staph she had, but also what antibiotic would be most effective in fighting it. (Had the doctor listened to me and taken a culture on our first visit, she may have been spared a great deal of pain and suffering. By the time we reached the specialist, she was covered in sores over 30% of her body. This would have made her THIRD time having chicken pox.) If you or your loved one has a sore that is questionable - slow to heal, swolen and red around it, painful, oozing - don't just see a doctor. Go to your doctor with the knowlege that MRSA is often misdiagnosed as spider bites or chicken pox. Our doctor had never seen a case of MRSA before ours (to his knowlege). If the sore is 1 cm or more in diameter DEMAND that a culture/sample be taken from it for testing. The testing is not too expensive to have peace of mind that you are being treated in the correct manner. Doctors are human and make mistakes, that's why it is so important to arm yourself with the truth. If you have not seen MRSA in your community yet, stay tuned because you will. This is part 1 in a series I plan to do sharing tips and helpful information about MRSA taken from lessons learned the hard way in my family's year-long fight against it.