christy hopper
lexington,tn

This didn’t hurt too much at first - just a little swelling. However, upon my return to England 24 hours later, the area at the top of my leg had begun to swell and it was becoming increasingly painful. Of course, being a man I thought it would heal itself and that I would need nothing more than some cream that contained Hydrocortizone and Crotamiton….it didn’t help a bit. The wound had swollen up and little white pimples as described by others above had appeared on my sore too. The pain was excruitating and I attempted some DIY lancing with a needle. I guessed that once the swelling could be reduced, I would feel a bit better - ha! When I had inserted the needle about half a centimetre into the swelling and I wasn’t feeling any pain, I decided to stop. It was now obvious that some professional help was going to be needed.

The following morning the wound had started to leak a bit. Looking at it, I could see a gaping oozing hole had appeared and it was time to get to the doctor.

The lesson here is to get a medical opinion straight away. Once I was on the antibiotics (Flucloxacillin) and having the wound cleaned and packed with Kaltostat every day, then slowly (three weeks) it began to heal and has now cleared up leaving a scar to remind me of the happy event.

I still do not know if I was bitten, or if the swelling was as a result of a bite. Either way, seeing an infected wound on you own body should be enough to spur anybody to get help as soon as possible. Enjoy the pics!

It felt like there was burning acid on my skin. I finally went to the hospital after I couldn’t stand the pain any longer. They had to cut it open and remove the poison from inside it. Then they put packing inside the hole and I had to go back in a week and have the packing removed. It had ate a large piece of my skin and left a large hollow place in my butt. We did find the spider in my car. It was a brown recluse. Next time I will go to the hospital as soon as I notice something that looks like a boil if I’ve been outside in Florida.

I am terrified now because yesterday I had what I assumed was a mosquito bite on my leg. It was itchy and was red. When I woke up this morning I had a small white blister on my leg with a red swollen area around it going out about 1 inch each way. I can not handle another huge hole in my leg I still have my massive purple scar from the last one.

I immediately took my cipro ( anti-biotic) and I hope and pray that it will just shrivel up and die and not turn into another huge painful and costly experience for me.

I felt pressure. It looked like a pimple and the pus was noticeable. I’m a popper, so I popped it and nothing would come out but I felt pain and hardness around the pimple. Shortly after, I noticed two more smaller pimples appearing about 2 inches below the main bite. I continued to squeeze my skin (I grabbed a hold of the hardness that surrounded the wound and squeezed as hard as I could handle) time and time again and eventually from 1-10 of pain, I began to experience a terrible 30.

I had pus, blood and clear liquid ooze out. The area was red, hot, hard and painful. I began to cry because the pain was so intense and I could feel a throbbing sensation. I then applied a heating pad but put a cloth in between my skin and the pad. I asked everyone around if they had any healing suggestions.

My sister told me of my nephew’s experience of staph and how he applied a slice of bacon and the gunk inside came out. So, I applied a slice of bacon. I tried heating an aloe plant and placing it on top of the wound as hot as I could stand it (four times). My wound turned into the size of a head of an eraser. I had a little hole. I only covered it with a bandaid because my clothes were irritating the sore.

Although, the majority of the time it was not covered. Gosh, it hurt to bend. I’m a very active person but began walking around for a few days as if I was a little old lady. I did go to the doctor about 4 days later and was told I had a staph infection (no culture done) because it was already healing. I was instantly put on a 10 day course of antibiotics along with pain medication. I continued to squeeze the pus and by a little over a week I saw a major difference for better. I am free of pain, closed wound and still taking my antibiotics. I have a little hardness where the wound once was that I am questioning the doctor when I go back for a follow up visit.

Although, you must know that my boyfriend,also, after a couple of days of my bite developed a bump on his stomach. He thought that this was something different because he did not have a pus pocket. It was red,painful, as big as a quarter and hot to the touch. So, I sterilized a pin with alcohol and poked an opening in it to try to squeeze the pus out.

The redness around the area of the bite was about 6 inches across, from one end to another. The only difference in his treatment is that we did not try bacon. We are having trouble controlling his infection but he too, sought the same physician as myself.

At the first visit he asked to be drained. So an incision about 2 inches across was made and 2 cc of drainage followed (includes blood and pus). A culture was sent to the laboratory and yes, Positive for MRSA. He was prescribed some stronger antibiotics and has had his follow up visit just recently. He requires another visit in two weeks. I’ve been doctoring his wound about 3 times a day. As soon a I see it soiling, we put a new dressing and clean it with 3% hydrogen peroxide.

Right now what hurts more is the tape that’s used to keep the gauze in place. Have purchased several. Also, bending over or sitting is hard to do. He takes his medicine 4 times a day and slowly is improving. So, I do know that every person has a different reaction.

Our bodies fight differently and you should seek medical advise immediately. Disinfect constantly. Use gloves during change of dressings. Discard trash after every change of dressing. Use a pill dispenser to help you keep track. Make sure you take all of the antibiotics.

For those without insurance, go to Wal-Mart and check to see if these medicines fall in the $4.00 range. You can call around and compare prices with all pharmacies. You will be amazed at the difference in prices.

MRSA is most often contracted in or near hospitals, where sick people gather and can’t help coughing, bleeding, having their sores and other skin lesions pop, leak and suppurate.

Once a few individual MRSA organisms have set up a happy home in your skin (maybe from the spider itself. maybe when you presented at the ER wth that spider bite, maybe when your mailman sneezed on you the day before that, you can’t tell without expensive DNA typing to identify the specific strain of MRSA that got you and compare it to that of other people’s MRSA infections) then they immediately start growing and reproducing.

As they do this - inside the cells of your body - they create little capsules of protein called “plasmids” which contain the actual genetic instructions for MRSA to produce chemicals called beta-lactamases which are the actual things that make MRSA resistant to so many antibiotics.

This biological “strategy” is so successful that the human race is beginning to experience waves of different strains of disease organisms, all of which, like once antibiotic-resistant Staph. aureus, no longer die as efficiently as they once did when your family doc gives you an antibiotic.

I’m going through this process with an sinus infection which used to die just fine in the presence of clarithromycin, and before that penicillin, ampicillin, and a number of other chemicals. Now we’re trying an antibiotic I’ve never heard of. Big fun.

Please feel free to blame the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA. Not being happy with sales of perfectly good antibiotics to the medical profession, Big Pharma decided it would be great to pick up a few extra bucks by selling these same antibiotics to farmers, ranchers, poultry raisers, whatever to put in their animals’ food - so these agribusiness guys save money on the labor it takes to keep animal pens clean enough not to serve as giant incubators for germs by putting relatively inexpensive antibiotics in the animals’ food and water.

Problem with that approach is that the big, filthy, urine and feces-swarming animal care facilities at your local chicken/beef/whatever farm now become incubators for germs which share resistance to the latest antibiotics placed in the animal feed. A plasmid which evolved randomly to give resistance to one antibiotic can, swimming in the sea of urine and feces our food animals wallow in, move on to other disease germs, and eventually reach us through our food, or through dirt on the shoes of meat plant workers, or run-off from the animal pens into our fresh water supply… there’s a hundred ways for antibiotic resistance to spread.

The Food and Drug Administration, which is controlled by Congress, which takes bribes from Big Agribusiness, allows this crap (literal crap, teeming with new and even more resistant strains of MRSA, thanks to Big Agro, Big Pharma, FDA and Congress) to go on and has done so for decades.

We flatter ourselves that things have changed from the time of Sinclair Lewis, whose magazine articles on the abuses prevalent in the meat packing industry a hundred years ago caused Congress to create the FDA in the first place. They haven’t - except for effectively getting worse, because the widespread use of potent antibiotics in agriculture and meat packing has spread the problem Lewis documented farther and deeper in our society while allowing us to kid ourselves that there’s no longer a problem.

Every now and then, Nature tries to correct this self-deception of ours by sending out antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli that strike with ferocity, getting past the porous web of sanitation surrounding our fast food and supermarket industries to invade someone’s hamburger or taco and - if the victim is a child or someone with an unusually poor immune system for a number for reasons we know about only too well - that person dies.

Sometimes the sanitation web around our food supply allows fogs of resistant organisms to enter our food supply and we then read about epidemics of resistant E. coli or MRSA taking down dozens of kids (whose songs about grimy gopher guts and mystery meat at school cafeterias are vindicated after all, at least for a short time).

Cure? Find out if your Representative and or Senator voted to weaken food safety regulations. If he or she did, fire him or her, or educate him or her with an Email or FAX explaining what I just told you. Then come the next election, make sure that this becomes a major campaign issue - before ALL of our antibiotics become useless against killer germs.

Get ‘er done, folks!

I am curious as to how to protect myself and the kids from getting it from him. i am disinfecting alot, and using a lot of precautions, but i have herd it can be airborne. does anyone know exactly how it can be spread??