Let’s talk about MRSA victims I know
My work with my MRSA bill , activism and advocacy has taken me all over Maine, to Chicago and to Washington DC twice with another trip coming up soon. I meet with other advocates, our senators and representatives, the Consumers union, and victims regularly to help stop this scourge. I have met many of the families in person and online.
Let me introduce you to a few.
Two of my new acquaintances are military veterans. One got a new hip then MRSA. Another got a new knee, then MRSA. The second one had to have his new knee removed and will soon have his leg bones fused and have an unbend-able knee. If he makes it through this surgery, he will have to learn to walk again using a shoe lift and a walker. The alternative to that was amputation and a prosthesis. He wouldn’t hear of that. He is 86 years old.
I met a young mother in Washington DC in November. She got MRSA when she went into the hospital to have her baby. She suffers with it herself, but the worst of it is her baby has it. They have had continuous outbreaks since her baby was born 9 months ago. She talked with me in the hotel hallway and literally cried on my wide shoulders. Her heart is broken. She has another child and a husband that she worries sick over. Her worry is that they will get MRSA too. She is a very young woman who is now on SSI disability because of MRSA.
Another friend, a mutual friend of my husbands and mine, had a colonoscopy. He had a polyp too far up to remove through the scope. His doc said it will be a piece of cake to remove that polyp through his abdomen. So, he did. He got MRSA. He had to have a long section of bowel removed and now has a colostomy. After being treated for the MRSA, he got C Diff and spent a lot of time in the VA home locally and got treated for that with IV antibiotics. A weeks worth was around $7000 he said, but “thankfully” his insurance covered it.
A mentor of mine who is also a MRSA victim, injured her ankle years ago. She had surgery and got MRSA. She went into sepsis and nearly died and still they were not telling her about her infection….what it was. She has fought with the legislators in Illinois to get the first MRSA bill passed into law with mandatory Active Detection and Isolation .
I didn’t personally know the latest victim I have become aware of, but the cause of her death was published in the local paper. She was a beautiful 67 year old wife of a prominent local pathologist. She at one time climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. She was the secretary at the local medical center’s chaplains desk. What a tragedy.
Another is an ICU RN by profession. She contracted MRSA at work. She has had repeated bouts of MRSA related infections. Currently she lingering illness from recent flu and is seriously ill. She will go to the ER this morning and we hope she gets the treatment she needs. She had MRSA pneumonia with sepsis several years ago and she is very frightened of a recurrence.
I could go on and on. The stories are incredible. These people are all intelligent, trusting and until MRSA, healthy people. Too often the argument regarding MRSA prevention isn’t about all of these suffering patients or their families. It is all about money and a lot about saving face. Savings lives and stopping unnecessary suffering rarely comes into the conversation.
MRSA is brutal, no matter how old you are or in what medical condition you are in. We have to break the chain of infections by getting hospital screening right and educating everyone on the dangers of MRSA and how to stop the spread of the disease.
