TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Spring Hill Man Recounts Living With Skin Infection

ADVERTISEMENT

By LINNEA BROWN, Hernando Today

Published: November 6, 2007

SPRING HILL - With all the media hype surrounding recent infections across the nation caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, not many people know what it's like to live with it.

Spring Hill resident Danny Wolfe does.

Wolfe, 59, a computer operator for an electric company, contracted the potentially deadly illness a year and a half ago.

MRSA is spread through skin-to-skin contact with an infected person. The infection is common in places such as hospitals and schools, and athletes in contact sports, such as wrestling, are considered to be particularly at risk.

'Just A Pimple'

It all started on April Fools' Day 2006.

Wolfe was watching TV at home, dozed off and felt a stinging sensation on his abdomen just below his navel. Noting what looked like a small white blister, he dismissed it and went to bed.

"I showed my wife in the morning, and she said, 'It's just a little pimple. Don't worry about it,'" Wolfe said.

The "pimple" continued to swell, however.

Five days later, Wolfe felt nauseous, dizzy and disoriented. After a night of restless sleep, Wolfe saw his doctor, Brian Kroll of Spring Hill, who gave him two injections of antibiotics, ordered blood tests and sent him home to put warm compresses on the blister.

"It had grown to the size of my hand, and was oozing," Wolfe said.

Several days later, he could not stop vomiting. With the red, oozing sore stretching across his abdominal area - he estimated 22-by-6 inches - he visited Kroll again.

"The doctors were shocked at the size and said, 'You're going to the hospital," he said.

At Spring Hill Regional, doctors placed Wolfe on intravenous antibiotics for a week while they conducted tests and worked to drain and clean the sore.

"Every morning and night, they would pour peroxide on me and stick a long Q-Tip into the sore to clean it out," Wolfe said. "It felt like someone sticking a knife into me and pulling it out."

Two days into his hospital stay, Kroll came into his room and broke the news.

"He said, 'It's just what we expected. MRSA,'" Wolfe said. "And here I was thinking it was a spider bite."

Because MRSA cannot be treated with traditional antibiotics, such as methicillin, Wolfe credited Kroll with saving his life by prescribing Levaquin and ciprofloxacin.

A Recurring Issue

Because Wolfe's infection occurred prior to widespread media attention given to the illness this year, he said he had no idea what MRSA was.

"I had never heard of it," he said. "I thought he was saying 'Mercer.'

"

After he left the hospital, a nurse visited his home daily. She showed his wife how to administer Wolfe's intravenous medication for the next 21 days.

"It was scary for both of us," he said.

Because of the antibiotics, he was placed on an 8,000-calorie-a-day diet, but still shed 20 pounds from his 6-foot, 4-inch, 280-pound frame in the first month.

After six weeks, Wolfe returned to work.

For the next year, he kept getting infections that weren't healing, such as a two-month bout with double pneumonia and pink eye in November 2006.

"They tell you if MRSA goes into your bloodstream or lungs, it can kill you," Wolfe said. "I was terrified."

In spring 2007, he suffered a setback when a different doctor gave him a shot of cortisone for arthritis pain, unaware cortisone can send MRSA patients into relapse. Within weeks, his body was covered in welts and blisters that wouldn't heal.

Diagnosed once again with MRSA, Brooksville infectious disease specialist Vatsala Sastry sent Wolfe to an infusion center for 15-days of intravenous antibiotics.

"I met other people there with MRSA, too," Wolfe said. "I guess I was fortunate because I had good health insurance."

MRSA-Free, For Now

The good news: Wolfe has been symptom-free since March.

The bad news: He'll never be completely cured.

The Florida Department of Health estimates 25 percent to 30 percent of people are carriers of staph, and 1 percent of people carry MRSA.

In 2005, the illness was responsible for an estimated 94,000 life-threatening infections, according to the American Medical Association.

Although Wolfe said his illness is dormant, it's something he never forgets he has.

"Now, I have to tell everyone I have MRSA," he said. "People are frightened by it - even my family. It's a very scary thing, and now I worry that every ache or pain I feel could be MRSA-related."

Wolfe has resigned himself to manual therapy for his arthritis and he knows how to protect himself and those around him if he ever has another outbreak.

His wife, Micheline, never contracted it.

"We made sure we were very careful when I was sick," Wolfe said. "Everything was 'your stuff' and 'my stuff,' and we used paper plates for every meal."

With three years to go until retirement, Wolfe is also learning to live with other physical issues, such as memory loss, that he thinks have been caused by the heavy doses of antibiotics.

"Until it hits home, you don't really know how bad it is," Wolfe said. "This takes a toll on you."

Getting The Word Out

A study published by government researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month reported that infections caused by MRSA are no longer confined to hospitals and are increasingly found in community settings, such as schools.

The study reported an estimated 18,650 people died from MRSA in the United States in 2005.

Wolfe is all too aware of statistics like these - and all the public precautions not being taken.

He also keeps a videotape on hand of a ESPN report that discusses the prevalence of the illness in the NFL and NBA and said he'd like to see similar videos distributed to schools.

Besides hospitals, "the biggest danger for kids is wrestling or playing sports at schools," he said. "If you pick up someone else's towel, you've got it."

Staph infections, including MRSA, typically start as small red bumps that resemble pimples. However, the bumps can burrow deep into other parts of the body, causing potentially life-threatening infections.

Cases have been reported at schools in counties across Florida, with the Hernando County Health Department confirming Thursday that one student is being treated for it.

Deltona Elementary School was completely sanitized last weekend, and district officials have said they will be providing extra blood-borne pathogen training for teachers.

By state law, MRSA is not designated as a "reportable" illness and physicians do not have a legal obligation to report it.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT