I have been going around and around in my head with this question ever since it was posed in Mrsa comments by a woman named Anna. She and her child have MRSA and she is wondering if she should put her child in school. My first answer in my head was NO WAY! but then I pictured telling my five year old granddaughter that she wouldn’t be starting school after all this fall and I wavered. Then I took a little survey of the people I know and their answer was the same as my first instinct. I have a son-in-law who is so terrified he won’t come to my home any more just because I visit people with MRSA even though he knows I am very careful about cleaning myself and my vehicle after I come home and I don’t blame him one bit although it rubbed me wrong when he first said it. Then there are people like the comment writer Rebecca on MRSA notes who believe it is everywhere anyway so no one can even know how they contracted it. Maybe she would feel differently about this?

I am thinking I would likely end up homeschooling my granddaughter if the question came up in my family in that way. I would resent it if my child came down with MRSA and the only contact known to me was another child in her school with it. I know HIV positive children had to fight for and won the right to attend public school but HIV is transmitted in much fewer ways. BUT just now, thinking about that, I would be creeped out if my granddaughter played with an HIV positive child, too!! I wish I had a better answer but especially when I think about the MRSA residing in their little noses and how often kids touch or pick their noses, I would not send a child of mine to school with MRSA.

But what about adults? What about the man who’s boss and fellow employees ridiculed and ostracized him? Do we want people in the work place with MRSA either? And, with its growing prevalence, do we have a society that could afford to support all the people with MRSA on Disability? I don’t think so. Especially with the cost of treatment itself going as high as $30,000. a year. We need better solutions to the containment of MRSA which will have to come from the scientists and pharmacists who helped create it. We have to raise government funding for this research which is I believe the ultimate goal of all of us trying to band together and DO something.

While I can’t make Anna’s decision about whether or not to enroll her child in school I can let it motivate me to step it up a bit here and start pestering the government a little more. If all of us would start shooting off letter after letter to our congressmen and senators maybe they would eventually take notice. I pray they do for all our sakes. With hope and faith, Rhoda