So my sister has the Super Bug staph thang goin' on now.

Post-op- the site of her elbow replacement infected, so now she's in the hospital with a heart cath, getting antibiotics pumped into her. They surgically drained the goo from her arm yesterday, so she should start getting better over the weekend.

Shit happens. Big time.

The Chinese curse has come true- we ARE living in interesting times.

Big ol cyst - right on his butt. Until it burst, he was throwing up and "out of his head." When it burst, he started feeling better, but went to the doctor. He's better now, but God it was terrible. The drainage was so bad it ruined several pairs of underwear and a couple of pair of pants. He wasn't able to be home for a week - he and his wife had twins about a month ago. The doctor thought my brother probably got the staph at the hospital.

It took over 3 weeks to stop draining after it was surgically opened.

My BIL also had one on HIS ass- he was fool enough to squeeze it himself instead of going to the doctor, and it ended up as a 7" long wound right where he sits. It took a couple months for him to heal up.

No one is safe from this.

I know MRSA and VRSA but don't know MSMA

A woman in my church had a hip replacement, and almost died from a horrible "flesh eating" staph infection that they couldn't control. She was hospitalized for a few months, which was hard, because she's a foster mom with a big family. She'll be on a cane the rest of her life, and she's not an old woman.

I'm sure the "cyst on the butt" thing sounded funny to family and friends, but was probably pretty painful and scary.

My son lost a leg to it a few years ago. The guy is almost never sick and the only thing they could figure is that he'd had a thorn in his shoe a couple days before he got sick. Of course, it spread faster than anything they'd ever seen and this was before they knew what to do. Scary shit and he actually had about six surgeries in a week trying to catch up to it before they amputated, died on the table at least once, and it was just an overall bad way to spend the summer. (This was when I learned the Shriners are the shit, BTW--not just a bunch of old farts on tiny motorcycles, they put us up for a month for rehab and gave him a couple new legs free of charge.) Luckily, he's very evolved and coped with it like it was not such a big deal. (He's a computer geek, not an athlete.)

Oddly enough, I transcribe acute care records now and get tons of ICU patients fighting superbugs. They have a lot more in the arsenal to deal with this now. Even though they've gotten incredibly anal about hand washing and stuff, they can never stop the spread because everyone's sharing equipment, keyboards, phones, etc. The hospital has become a really dangerous place to be.

Hope your sister clears right up. That's a sucky way to spend the holidays.

flesh-eating kind of staph a few years ago. He survived but it was long, hard bout. I'll be praying for your sister.