antibiotics | COPD and Other Stuff

One Face of MRSA – What Does the Resistance Bug MRSA Look Like in Kitsap County? Here is one face.

A Look at MRSA

Ignoring edema in your lower legs?
I did. Ask your doctor how to get rid of it – permanently…not just take water pills and forget it.

There is a reason edema develops for each person. Find out the cause, and, if possible – fix it. You do not want what I have.

Ask your partner – your doctor.
The latest recent culture of my open wound came back positive again – the second positive result since it began again in my lower left leg, October 2013..

“MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It causes a staph infection (pronounced “staff infection”) that is resistant to several common antibiotics. There are two types of infection. Hospital-associated MRSA happens to people in healthcare settings. Community-associated MRSA happens to people who have close skin-to-skin contact with others, such as athletes involved in football and wrestling.

Infection control is key to stopping MRSA in hospitals. To prevent community-associated MRSA

Practice good hygiene
Keep cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a bandage until healed
Avoid contact with other people’s wounds or bandages
Avoid sharing personal items, such as towels, washcloths, razors, or clothes
Wash soiled sheets, towels, and clothes in hot water with bleach and dry in a hot dryer

If a wound appears to be infected, see a health care provider. Treatments may include draining the infection and antibiotics.

NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases”
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mrsa.html
My opinion: (Test all patients and personnel in hospitals – stop the spread of MRSA)

Ignoring it – spreads it
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Harrison Medical Center Wound Care, Hyperbaric Medicine, Infusion Center
The understated low-slung buildings in the old Sheridan Village show a benign face to the wounded people who fight life and death wound care treatment inside.
Opening the door to the reception area brings a cheery “Hi! …Debbie knows your name.

Debbie Knows Your Name and smiles a welcome!

Debbie is usually the first introduction to the amazing friendly, competent and cheerful docs, nurses, technicians – all the great people working there. The patients reflect their environment as does the varied reading material offered. From deep sea training to bird reading …nothing ordinary about this place or the people in it – health care or patients.
A minor breakthrough happened when I awoke a few mornings ago feeling nothing. An absence of pain in my leg – no pain anywhere….the apparent result of the new sulfur antibiotic for the escalating lymphedema/cellulitis/MRSA wounds in my left leg.
The pain gradually returned.

Debriding is done with a sharp razor after the wounds get surface Lidocaine to deaden the flesh. Most of the time it works.
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GOOD NEWS: I heard about an Ultrasonic Debridement machine – pain free that takes the place of a sharp razor and found a study on it in Ontario, Canada.
Efficacy Study of Ultrasound-Assisted Debridement to Influence Wound Healing (UltraHeal)
Principal Investigator: Christine A. Murphy, MClSc PhD(c) The Ottawa Hospital
Sponsor: Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
The start date was December 2013 – Estimated completion December 2014.
Official Title ICMJE A Randomized Controlled Trial to Investigate if Application of Low Frequency Ultrasound-assisted Debridement May Improve Healing and Infection Outcomes for the Person With Vasculopathy and Recalcitrant Wounds of the Lower Extremity
Brief Summary The UltraHeal Study is a randomized controlled trial to compare healing response of low frequency contact ultrasonic-assisted debridement in addition to best practice wound care to best practice wound care alone in a Vascular Surgery Clinic patient population with wounds of the lower extremity.
Detailed Description The study will also investigate the bacterial tissue burden and protease activity to provide further insight into the infection and inflammation aspects of healing barriers in a challenging population.

IF the study proves out, we should be thinking about getting a Ultrasound machine that uses new technology to debriding wounds and helps healing…

Harrison Medical Center Foundation – how can we help you help us get that machine if the study is successful?

Thanks for listening… more later…
Sharon O’Hara, (familien1@comcast.net)

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I was recently in the hospital to get a head start on trying to control the leaky cellulitis/lymphedema/edema causing havoc and pain on my left leg and life. For an entire day all my experiences in the hospital were incredibly good… until…

The new aide came closer to take vitals until she was close enough to smell cigarette smoke on her. “Smoker”? I asked – she said, “Yes” and continued to wrap the blood pressure cuff around my left arm and placed the thermometer into my mouth.

For whatever reason when she finished with the blood pressure, she held on to the handle of the thermometer and I smelled the smoke on her fingers held next to my nose. My mouth was tight around the thermometer and now could not breathe without smelling her smoke and I pulled away and said, “Your fingers reek of cigarette smoke.”

She agreed and I suggested she wash her hands. She said she did but the smoke smell did not come off. I was trapped – a hospital patient forced to inhale cigarette smoke from a hospital worker. She said she would get someone else to do my vitals.

Funny thing. I was in that hospital because of a forty-year smoking habit and developed emphysema (COPD) due – probably – to smoking.

I stopped smoking in 1997 – a tough time that took me over two years to get over the gut wrenching addiction urge to smoke again…and here I was trapped in the hospital, forced to inhale smoke from a hospital employee reeking of cigarette smoke. The irony of all their outside hospital signs proving they were a “Smoke-free” hospital and grounds was laughable.

I complained. The hospital person I complained to told me they would get someone else to do my vitals…that I did not have to have a smoker helping me. I asked about the other seniors – any patient – who would probably not complain of being forced to inhale the toxins of cigarette smoke from a hospital employee for fear of retaliation…no one seemed concerned about them. Apparently, the issue is only an issue with me, an ex-smoker, as far as the hospital is concerned.

A few hours later, the RN came in with the vials of antibiotics and other meds that went directly into my veins. He dropped one vial, hesitated, picked it up, hooked it into the devise going directly into my vein, and plunged the contents inside. Neither of us said a word. I remember thinking, isn’t this hospital floor dirty? And hoped the contents of the vial stayed uncontaminated.

As an almost thirty year hairdresser, if I dropped a comb on the floor it was cleaned and re-sterilized before touching a patron. Apparently, hospitals are different.

A while later it was time to hook up the oxygen tube to my bipap. I pulled to get it for her but the end was stuck between the hospital bed wheel and the metal bedframe I’d just lowered. I left to visit the bathroom and when I came back, the hospital employee had ‘fixed’ it.

I looked and she had placed the deformed tube end on my machine but had not pushed it on to secure it. I did it and went to bed…wondering why an employee was allowed to reek of cigarette smoke and work around patients….wondered why an RN didn’t throw the vial away and get a new one for the patient when it dropped to the dirty floor…wondered why the tube end of the oxygen tube wasn’t replaced by a clean, sterile one when it had been lodged against the dirty hospital bed wheel.

To be clear…I do not care if the hospital person smokes. I care when her/his right to smoke interferes with my right to breathe clean air – especially in a hospital.

I was discharged and came home the next day.

Am I overreacting and expecting too much from a hospital?

Thanks for reading… Sharon O’Hara

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Tag Archives: antibiotics

One Face of MRSA, Resistance Bug, in Kitsap County

Does a hospital’s right to hire smokers trump a patient’s right to breathe clean air?