Staph Infection!

I just wanted to remind people that getting a staph infection is not a preferred way to get a few days off of work.

Friday night I loaded Blue Man Group out of Ceasars Atlantic City. They had been there all week and it was very messy. Part of their show involved water and paint and they laid plastic down on the stage before laying non-slip decking over it. As such, some of that water has been there all week and who knows if the decks were last cleaned.

While taking them up and packing them away, I bashed my left hand. In the course of the day, I soaked my gloves, socks, and pant cuffs due to the water on stage. Yesterday, after getting up from a nap, I had a hard spot where I bashed my hand and a swollen knuckle. I thought I had brushed the knuckle or something.

This morning I woke up to a completely swollen hand that went from the mid-knuckle to above the wrist with red streaks starting up the forarm, So I went to the Emergancy care place down the steet and was immedatly told it was staph and they gave me a penicillian shot, perscriptions to two major antibiotics, and a slip of paper that says I cannot go back to work until after the 3rd.

Nope, not the way I want time off

Ooh! Be safe, man. Do EXACTLY what they say with the meds.......Did they figure out which species yet? Obviously, if it is Staph. aureus, there are some very serious strains.....

My wife was a CNA and contracted MRSA on her forearm. It took awhile to get rid of and left a scar. Nasty stuff. Good luck and hope you get to feeling better soon.

Make sure you have professional eyes on that thing regularly, like every 2-3 days until it is getting much better, at a minimum. If it gets worse at all, go to a doctor immediately. Did they culture it? That's the only way to tell staph v. strep. Either are bad.

The doc's right....Staphs and Streps are all round under the microscope. The way to tell which Staph is to grow the suspected microbe on an MSA plate. If it turns the media yellow, you've got aureus. (...and then we worry, since MRSA is one strain of aureus.)

Let's hope that the Staph you have is Staph. epidermis.

I had a nasty staph infection on my shin when I was 12, it wasn't MRSA but some other equally serious strain. None of the oral antibiotis would slow it down much, so I ended up hospitalized on IV Vancomycin and some other last option IV antibiotic, and that barely worked, I actually got to the point where I had a surgeon look at it to develop an attack plan if it kept growing(by then it was as wide as my calf and 8" long or so). Good thing it receded when it did.

If that E36 M3 doesn't stop growing, go back to the doc immediately.

Argh.

I've wondered about the mess they leave behind...I've only seen videos of them online but it must be pretty scummy when the performance is over.

Under the microscope, staph is grouped in clusters. Strep is spread out. Both are bad. Think "flesh eating bacteria" bad, which is where it can go if untreated and it gets away from your immune system. So, like I said, professional eyes on it regularly at least until you're around the corner.

MRSA is an interesting varient. It is actually not a very "bad" bacteria, as far as bad bacteria go. It is not efficient at growing because it's broken. However, the way it is broken makes it resistant to the drugs we use to kill Staph. A., so it is a serious problem because of that. Now for a real interesting bacteria, we had a Pseudomonas at UTMB (named after the school or the burn unit, I forget which) that was not resistant to all known antibiotics. It was completely immune to all combinations of 2 known antibiotics. If you tried really, really hard, you could find a combination of 3 extremely expensive oddball antibiotics that would slow it down. A little. And, it was never the same 3 antibiotics. That was a bad-ass bacteria.

Ordinary Pseudomonas is already bad-ass.....anything that can live in antiseptic solutions and dissolve collagen out of the the cartilage in your ear is bad.

http://www.cmaj.ca/content/183/7/819.full.pdf+html

the swelling already seems a little better.. and the red streaks are a little less (I marked them) so I think it is responding to the penicillian shot. Now to see if the other antibiotics kick it's ass or not.

Tomorrow I have to contact work to see about getting reimbersed for this as it was caused by working conditions. I know they are going to fight me

All told, between what I paid out and the work I am missing.. this has cost me over a grand so far

Does ur doc note say it was from work? Need one of those. Red lines are very very bad.

Some Staph species are normal skin flora. All that exposure to water and the wound probably just gave it a portal of entry past your skin. Frustrating situation man, hope it continues resolving.

Jaxmadine wrote: Does ur doc note say it was from work? Need one of those. Red lines are very very bad.

it's actually hard to tell -what- job. I worked almost continuously from friday morning through till last night at 2am with a few naps in between. The Job loading out Blue Man Group was the only one where I got hurt and the time frame fits for how fast thing has affected me.

I go back tomorrow for a checkup

Did u show ur boss u got hurt? Its very important. Ive been screwed by wc before. It sux.

sadly no.. it was just a slight hit.. get them all the time working. I have been cut, burned, and bruised. Getting hurt some comes with being a stagehand. Hot lights, heavy equipment, sharp edges, and stuff hanging overhead.. if we all stopped to tell somebody when we got a cut or something, we would never get anything done.

and yes, I know there is going to be a fight over this

Ouch, I've had regular Staph and MRSA. Both REALLY nasty. MRSA felt like I got hit with a BFH repeatedly. I gotta be really careful with making sure I take care of the whole staph stuff quick, as I am part robot and have metal in my back. I've heard of it going straight there and really berkeleying E36 M3 up.

well.. I got the go ahead to return to work tomorrow. I just have to keep the spot where the actual infection is bandaged incase I bump it and it bursts (it's on my index finger between the knuckles)

I came close with it.. if I had gone to work sunday and then seen my doc on monday, I probably would have found myself in the hospital. The red streaks running up my arm were halfway to the elbow. Today they are gone and the swelling is less than 1/4 of what it was.

Good news!

One of my grandsons has had MERSA a couple of times. The other one (his younger brother) appears to have had it once too.

Holy crap hope you get better. Apparently most people who work in a healthcare setting have antibiotic bacteria as part of their natural bacterial fauna. There is some crazy stuff out there, you should definitely contact the group and warn them that their act is hazardous to workers. You don't want anyone else getting a nasty bacteria. Wish I'd have never take microbiology class, off to wash my hands.