Superbugs

I haven’t written in awhile. We had a health crisis here. My wife came down with an aggressive infection and had to be hospitalized. Things seem better now, thank God. She continues to receive outpatient IV anti-biotics. Her infection started as impetigo, a skin infection that affects primarily children. Our daughter came down with it, and then we all developed a couple of pimple-like boils. My wife must have scratched one of hers, and introduced MRSA, which quickly formed an abcess.

We had the abcess drained, then she didn’t respond to her antibiotics. The wound culture took two days to come back (standard); it was no surprise that it was MRSA, a resistant strain of staph. By this time her arm was hot and swollen (cellulitus) so we got her into Hamad hospital, the big teaching hospital here, and they gave her a course of big-gun antibiotics (vancomycin). The wound itself is small and clean at this point, and in two days or so we should have her fixed up and back to normal. The baby is doing fine too.

The healthcare system here is pretty normal by western standards. The medical language is English… so there were no linguistic difficulties. They don’t isolate patients with MRSA. That is one major error on their part. I am sure that their facilities must be crawling with the stuff as a result. It’s odd too, they know the risks, and are very familiar with the organism. They claim it isn’t necessary.

The baby is due in a couple of weeks. We are almost ready. This past episode with the MRSA was kind of a setback, because we are still going to the hospital twice a day for wound care and antibiotics… not much time for anything else. I think the impetigo is finished. The rest of us have had no complications.