MRSA

So there's a title you don't ever want to read in someones blog. Yesterday was actually rather uneventful for Chelsea, but Logan had his own drama unfolding. Ryan came around lunch time w/ Logan and I noticed he was still wobbling on his hurt knee. When I looked at it in the light, I noticed around the sore the skin was red, hard and warm. I knew it was infected so I asked the nurses up here and they were all thinking cellulitis and they told me to take him to the Dr. I called our insurance company to check on our coverage for urgent care or ER visits b/c lately they don't seem to cover anything. Let me clarify, they have never covered any of our medical bills. Thank God Chelsea has a medical card! We finally decided to have my dad pick him up here in KC and take him to his regular pediatrician. Well the nurse practitioner that saw him said it was cellulitis with a mild abscess and she did a culture for staff. She was fairly sure it is MRSA.

Although I don't know much about MRSA I know it can be quite nasty to get rid of, so I immediately went into panic mode. His pediatrician gave us some for anyone who's been around him to put in their nose. Apparently it harbors in your nose. There's of course a regimen they want us to follow in order to keep in cleaned, and he's on an antibiotic, and not allowed to come back up here to see Chelsea. I'm so scared that they were together all day yesterday and her immune system is so weak. I notified her nurses and doctor immediately and they all reassured me that she's safe. The doctor told me the medication they use to treat MRSA is the same antibiotic that she's already on. She's been on it for 4 days b/c we were afraid the site of her Hickman looked like it could be infected. The Dr. said that actually many many people are carriers of this staff infection and don't even know. They didn't act like we needed to take any extra precautions except diligent hand washing (which we already do) and keep Logan away for a few days (done). I was imagining us cleaning the entire hospital room, the play room and all the toys he played with yesterday, but they didn't think that was necessary.

The crazy thing is we really don't know how he hurt his knee in the first place. First he said he fell on his tricycle at my mom's house, then it was he fell at his friends house, I'm not sure, but I'm thinking he hurt it once, then fell on the same spot again which made it worse. This is when the long hospital stays away from my family begin to take their toll. I'm always with Logan, and know what he's doing, and if he gets hurt or is acting differently, I know. Well I haven't been around, so I missed it. I wonder if I had been there if we could have kept it clean enough that it wouldn't have become infected. This is the problem with shuffling him from one place to another. Nobody really knows what happened.