By Shantell M. Kirkendoll
Flint Journal
Copyright 2007 The Flint Journal
GENESEE COUNTY, Mich. — The “super bug” on the rise in U.S. schools and health settings created a super frightening experience for Flint’s David King.
King saw a small scrape on his thigh continue to redden and swell even while taking a doctor-prescribed antibiotic.
“I remember asking my brother should I go to the hospital or just put a Band-Aid on it?” said King, who was diagnosed with the antibiotic-resistant staph infection known as MRSA and spent four days in the hospital.
The once-rare infection is becoming common and deadly. It can be spread by direct skin-to-skin contact or touching an infected surface.
If caught early, powerful drugs can knock out the bacteria. A Genesee County Health Department official said prevention can be as simple as washing one’s hands regularly and being stingy with towels and razors.
Dr. Gary Johnson, county medical director, said the health department is not required to track infections, but he believes, based on anecdotes, MRSA is becoming more widespread.
The potentially fatal germ thrives in health care settings where people have open wounds. But it’s occurring in schools, too - particularly among athletes who share sports equipment, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dayne Carroll, 17, of Flint Township missed six weeks of classes at Carman-Ainsworth High School because of a MRSA infection last winter.
The co-captain of the wrestling team had a nagging pimple on his elbow that went away with medications, then popped up again.
“It was a month later, and when we went to the hospital they cultured it and said ‘That’s MRSA. You have to stay here.’ ”
He was in the hospital for a week. He was sent home with an IV, but the antibiotics were so strong they killed his good bacteria along with the bad. By the third week, his treatment was altered because his white cell count dropped dangerously low.
Dayne’s mother, Kimberly Carroll, believes more prevention should be done statewide.
“During wrestling weekend tournaments, they don’t take the time to mop the mats every so often between matches. We’re aware that it would be unreasonable to mop it between every match, but taking a break to do it occasionally throughout the day could really help to prevent this,” she said in an e-mail to The Flint Journal.
“Sometimes, too, coaches ignore open wounds that wrestlers have and allow the kids to wrestle in order to get the win that they wouldn’t be able to achieve if their wrestlers weren’t out on the mats. It’s very serious, and rules need to be enforced better.”
She said there are strict rules that all wrestlers must pass a skin check before every tournament.
In a letter to The Flint Journal, Carman-Ainsworth’s athletic director said Dayne’s infection was not the school’s fault - officials had purchased new wrestling mats and modified the cleaning processes to avoid the dangerous germ before Dayne got sick.
Dr. A. Banerjee, a Hurley Medical Center pediatrician in Flint Township, currently has two patients taking IV medications to treat staph infections.
“It’s really put us in a corner because these staph infections don’t respond to the antibiotics we’re accustomed to using,” he said. “Now almost eight out of 10 infections are resistant to normal drugs.”
To some extent, it’s been brought on by the overuse of antibiotics, he said.
“Using antibiotics indiscriminately can make them ineffective when we need them,” Banerjee said. “Parents should not go to the doctor expecting to get antibiotics. They don’t cure everything. If it’s a viral infection, the body just has to fight it.”
It’s a mystery to King, 29, how he got the infection that started with a small scrape Aug. 18. He travels the country constructing department store displays, and bumps and bruises come with a day’s work.
He went to the emergency room after the scrape grew to a golf ball-sized boil overnight and was prescribed antibiotics.
Three days after the ER visit, he returned to the hospital.
“The wound wasn’t better or worse, but the area around it, the redness, had grown to my knee,” said King. “I didn’t know what I was dealing with.”
The doctors did, however, and he was hospitalized and hooked to an IV for the next four days.
“I was under the impression that this can happen from the over-prescription of antibiotics,” said King, who is uninsured and for whom prescription antibiotics are a rarity. “The bacteria get meaner and stronger after they’re exposed to antibiotics. Like anything else, they fight to live.”