I don’t write here about MRSA victims’ stories, for two reasons. First, there are excellent other sites on the net where MRSA communities have already formed, such as MRSA Resources and MRSA_Support; it seems disrespectful to the leaders of those very vibrant communities to try to duplicate their work.
And second and more selfishly, the roughly 50 victims who have spoken to me so far — with more to come — have done so on the understanding that their stories will appear first in my forthcoming book SUPERBUG. When the book is ready to go and its static site is built, I hope we’ll have a page that features victims’ stories and invites others to post theirs as well.
That being said, if you’ve come to this site because you have had MRSA, please get in touch! Post a comment: They are moderated, so I see them first and can take them out of the queue if you prefer to be private. Or email me: My email address is in the profile box on the right.
And with all that said, there is one additional victims’ site that I want to recommend. Consumers Union (yes, the people who publish Consumer Reports magazine) has a campaign called Stop Hospital Infections that is pushing for legislation requiring mandatory reporting of all HAIs including MRSA. The site combines advocacy tools with heartbreaking accounts of lives changed; take a look.
One Comment
My mother is currently in the hospital with MRSA blood infection. She had just been released after a 22 hospital stay when she had severe right shoulder pain and her port for her chemotherapy appeared infected. It took the hospital two days to identify the mrsa. Her right shoulder is two times bigger than it should be and her whole right arm is inflamed and swollen. They sampled the infection in her shoulder joint and it came back negative for mrsa. Now they think she may have a blood clot in her right arm from when they pulled her infected port. The port tested positive for mrsa. The hospital here is very non-chalant about the whole situation. I appears that this happens a lot and they said we should just gown and glove up when we visit her. I will not let my children visit her. They said that we shouldn't be worried. I am because when she was in the hospital prior to this she had a red inflammed rash on both legs that got larger as we watched it grow up to abdomen. They put her on prednizone, but it didn't work. They biopsied it, but nothing came back. I think this all started then. But the hospital said no. She has stage IV colon cancer and her liver is starting to fail. I am worried about all of the antibiotics they are putting into her to clear up the mrsa. I know that we will be very lucky if she gets out of the hospital alive.
Thanks for the vent.
Donna