Farrah was still in diapers at this
point. She was 17 months old and it was
May of 2011. I went to change her one
day and I saw a very familiar looking pimple in the crease of her leg along the
diaper line. It was not your normal
looking pimple (for anyone currently freaking out about a pimple) It’s more red, with or without a
whitehead. Farrah’s already had a
whitehead at this point, but was still small.
I used mupirocin on it (the cream) and just kept a close eye on it for
changes. To my pleasant surprise it
went away after a couple of days. It
never got bigger or formed a boil.
A few weeks later I found another
one. This one was on her inner thigh
very close to her diaper. I wasn’t so
lucky with just using the cream this time.
It quickly turned into a very painful boil. It was the size of a small egg underneath the
skin and very red on top. She couldn’t
walk right because of the pain. I quickly made a doctor’s appointment for
that day and my doctor agreed right away that it was probably MRSA again and we
got her started on another 10 day round of clindamycin. This stuff tastes awful. I tried a bit just to make sure she wasn’t
being a baby about it. Thankfully,
applesauce masked the taste well enough to take the full course. We saw the doctor 3 times during the
treatment to make sure it was getting better.
I wanted to get better answers now, so I made an appointment with a
pediatric infectious disease specialist in the city.
Also, then was about the time I
started googling, and it was the best and worst decision of my life. Seriously.
I have general anxiety to begin with, so reading about people with MRSA
who have lost limbs, lives, lbs of flesh…let’s just say panic set in. This was my baby girl. I read stories about people who had
reoccurring MRSA for years with no explanation and drugs that were becoming
resistant to their strains. My mind
started spiraling into thoughts of, what happens when the drugs stop working?
What happens if Farrah gets it and it spreads to her organs and she becomes
septic? What happens if the worst
happens? I can be a bit dramatic I
guess, but that’s what anxiety does to you.
I imagined burying her. I cried
countless hours praying to God to keep her healthy and rid her body of
MRSA. This is what google does to you.
I
can’t say that my experience was all bad though. Google did point me in the direction of many
MANY sites with ideas, possible natural cures instead of antibiotics, ideas
about the cause of reoccurrence of MRSA and things that might possibly help to
prevent its return.
See, the hardest part about MRSA is
that it is a bacteria (remember I’m no doctor, so if I don’t say something
completely right, I apologize) that lives on your skin and colonizes in your
nose. How does one protect a person from
themselves???? This was my biggest question. I could bleach bomb the entire house, which
I did, TWICE. I spent hours wiping
every single toy. I washed and dried
every single stuffed animal. I stripped
the beds and washed everything on hot twice, with tide and borax. I vacuumed and cleaned the carpets. Still, the bacteria was partial to living
on her. I don’t know the percentage of people who
carry this kind of staph, but it’s a decent number. How does one rid someone of microscopic
bacteria? How do I keep her safe?
As a mom, this was a very difficult
thing to comprehend. I didn’t know how
to keep her healthy and safe. Yes, I am
more paranoid than most, but I knew more now.
I knew how dangerous this could become.
Feeling helpless is one of THE worst feelings you can have as a
parent. This is how I felt.
I wanted you more than you will ever know, so I
sent love to follow wherever you go
