Doc said : was her at bathtime with disinfectant hand soap, not baby soap…unless it irritates her skin, then use the strongest thing that will not irritate her. You should just wash all the kids with this soap, he says. Wash her hands often through the day. (Mean while I’m freaking out.) He calls me back 3 days later and tells me she has MRSA from an infected insect bite of unknown origin. Don’t share her towels. Don’t let her swim in unclorinated pools. Wipe the potty seat with disinfectant wipes. Clean and cover the wound. Do the other kids have bumps? OTHER KIDS? (On and on…my head is swimming.) Mean while, I had just had a hysterctomy. 3 weeks after this, I come down with a weird red (no head on it) bump on my abdomen, next to my freshly healed incision. It’s the size of a penny. Next day, there’s 3 of them, in a raised track, 1/2 an inch high. I have 103f fever. Go to my doc. She puts me on bactrim and percocet, sends me to a surgeon. Surgeon says “I can tell you right now, this is MRSA. ” She lances it, like a sadist , with no numbing agent. MRSA sores, for some reason are extremely, and unusually painful. I want to die. I dug my fingers into my ribs and screamed and cried. She said “The medicine will not work with all of this puss here.” Culture comes back positive for MRSA. I go home with a 5 inch long open incision.

Clean with peroxide tomorrow, she says. ‘Listen carefully” (Now I’m ready to crap my boots) ‘I want you to put the bactrim cream in your nose to kill the staph in your nose, then scrub in the shower twice a day, every day, with iodine and antimicribial soap, even in your hair and on your face…everywhere…make sure you scrub under your nails. Wash your hands all the time. Bleach your shower and towels. Get disinfectant wipes and wipe all your doorknobs, light switches, and things that everyone touches. This was back in April and I am doing it to this day. MRSA is everywhere. And I am a confirmed germaphobe forever. Everytime I see a pimple…Everytime, I freak out. I clean it out and walk around with dots of iodine on my face. I spend an hour bleaching my bathroom every day. When I’m done showering, I am ready for naked surgery…and I’m not exaggerating. Don’t mess with MRSA

Well, about a week later, she had the same thing show up on her bum, so I immediately took her into the Naval Hospital on base and in the few hours we sat there waiting, the area became even more inflamed. By the time we got back to the room, it was very large, very red and very painful for her. It was to the point that I couldn’t even pick her up or touch anywhere near her bum. So, one of the docs drained it by just poking a hole in the area because he didn’t want to actually cut her open because she was so little. And I’ll tell you…I’ve never seen a child scream in so much agony in my life and at the same time be so tired that they are doing it when they are half asleep. And that’s after the numbing. It was absolutely horrible. They put her on Bactrim again and advised me to give her six sits baths a day for at least ten minutes each time to help keep the area cleaned out. After the second day, I had to pull out the gauze packing which was very tiny.

About two weeks after that, when I was really hoping it wouldn’t come back, I found another one on her other butt cheek. I didn’t even notice anything was wrong because she seemed fine, was sitting on her potty seat fine all day and never whined about anything. Well, at about 7PM, she fell on her butt and started screaming and crying. So, I had a feeling it was back. I checked and sure enough, she had another really warm, really red, really hard area that seemed to appear out of nowhere. It looked different than the other two though. The first two had white “heads” to them. This one didn’t even have that yet. So, I took her into the Naval Hospital again but this time because of how rapidly it was “growing”, they decided to anesthetize her and cut it open. I was told that hardly any puss came out of it at all but there was an enormous amount of pressure which was making her entire butt cheek really hard. This time, a different doc was handling it and he cut a hole in her bum that I could have put both of my thumbs into. It was packed with gauze, they put her on Bactrim once again, told me to alternate Tylenol and Motrin for pain and check up with her PCM. So, the next day, I had to pull the packing out and when I did, she writhed around in pain until the two foot of gauze was completely out. I was astonished at what I saw. This MRSA is nothing to mess with. If you have it, get to a doctor. I hope hers doesn’t keep coming back but I guess that’s the joys of living around a military base. After this was all said and done, I found out there has been an outbreak of MRSA on the base recently….it was really nice that they let everyone know….not.

Now I got another “bite” on my upper leg/ lower butt and it got really bad. I went to my dr. and he didn’t say whether it was a spider bite or MRSA. He gave me an antibiotic that is commonly used to treat MRSA and sent me on my way.

After reading some of the posts on this page about spider bites that caused MRSA and severe cases of MRSA, I am completely freaked out!!! It doesn’t help that my mom keeps telling me that I need to find the spider that is biting me because it’s just going to keep coming back to bite me! I was already afraid of spiders, but I am becoming scared to death of them and MRSA now!

I was out in my garden, in a skirt, pretending to be Martha Stewart. While sitting on the pavement near a low lying juniper bush I felt a prick on my inner thigh. I just moved over some, thinking I mistakenly sat on some cut bushes. That was on a Friday. By Monday evening I was feeling as if I was was getting sick and had an overall “bad feeling.” On Tuesday afternoon, when visiting the restroom at work, I felt sore on my inner thigh and thought that a mole there was just irritated. When I touched the area, it felt swollen. When I placed a wash cloth there, I noticed two sets of blood stains like pinholes and I moisturized it with baby oil. At the end of the day, I had a headache, felt tired and “sick” and my thigh was pulsating. I could not understand what was going on and inspected my thigh more thoroughly with a a mirror and found two sets of what could be fang marks! I had seen, what I now know to be brown recluse spiders in our garden, and had caught a few in the house that summer. I am petrified of spiders and called poison control immediately. They laughed at me when I expressed my concerns and advised me that no spiders in the US are poisonous and all I need is a antibiotic treatment from my doctor and should not be concerned.

By Wednesday I had fever and chills and horrible drawing pains. By Thursday I could not put my legs together to walk. There was a big pulsating lesion or abscess there and by the time I went to the ER, it was draining blood and pus.

Well, although I recounted the story to the triage nurse, she did not warrant any truth to my thought of it being a spider bite and, when I asked if she would at least draw blood and send it to the lab while I waited to be seen by the doctor, the lab results could confirm or deny my suspicions. She too laughed and waved me with unconcern to sit in the waiting room. It had been five hours by the time I was seen, and that was only at the insistence of others in the waiting room because the blood and pus was dripping on to the floor and they claimed that i looked as if I were going to faint.

They performed surgery to drain and remove the infected skin, leaving a whole as wide and as deep as a quarter. They discharged me as if I were a diabetic with an abscess (an assumption because I was overweight and African American). I was instructed to return two days later to review the healing.

Two days later, the hospital called and indicated that I was given the wrong antibiotic for what the lab results indicated was Staphylococcus Aureus and that the antibiotic was not strong enough to protect me! I could have died with the infection spreading all throughout my body had I not returned as instructed thinking that everything was probably fine! I was given Levaquin and told that I would need to see a surgeon and schedule surgery in an operating room. They suggested I find a cancer surgeon because the wound was exposing my bone and a cancer surgeon could work best with repairing it.

Without continuing to give you a day by day account of this incident, suffice it to say that a higher power intervened for me and what I was told would have taken 8 weeks to heal took only three! The main points I want to make is that the medical industry, perhaps, at that time, no one understood brown recluse spiders pose a great danger with Staphylococcus Aureus; also, no one took me seriously when I indicated that I had been bitten by a spider, or even took my suggestion to draw blood for lab work while I waited to be seen ….!

Now my question to you is this: this happened in 2003. In the past two years, I have noticed vertical lines on my nails: they are not raised and there are no splits. I used to get artificial nails done frequently but stopped just about a year ago. A friend said that these lines are an indication of yeast buildup in my body. I also seem to have a consistent buildup of mucous in my lungs which the expectorate is white, a little cotton like surrounded by clear mucous. When reading the information about yeast infections and seeing that it can be generated from Staphylococcus Aureus from spider bites (your website) I am concerned that spider bite incident is not over and done with. Could you please advise? I would like to have any information from other’s that you have compiled or any trend that you have seen with these spider bites and subsequent symptoms from Staphylococcus Aureus.

I am extremely appreciative for your information.

Zelda