One thing the medical people all seem to agree on about CA MRSA is that it is colonized, lives, in the nose of carriers and those infected. I’ve heard several percentages of how many of the population are colonized and so far know it is between ten and fifty percent. My doctor told me that she is sure that 100% of the medical community are colonized. What I have been noticing a lot lately is how often people touch their noses! I see it mostly in guys but women feel the honker now and then, too. Also, I find it bothering me how we all know to cover our noses when we sneeze but I’ve yet to see anyone excuse themselves to go wash their hands afterwards except for me now in my new awareness and real fear of CA MRSA. I watch people cuddling little babies and the little cuties love to touch our faces and even stick their little fingers up our noses occasionally and I shudder. I know, before now we worried mostly about catching a cold from a nose, and that is all most people still know since so few know about the epidemic creeping across our country. But folks, the nose is a no no and a dangerous place to touch. I am very likely colonized from the close contact I have with CA MRSA, so all I have to do is touch a bit of runny on my nose when coming in out of the cold entering Walmart without thinking, and then I pick up things I look at and decide not to buy so I put them back nicely accidently leaving CA MRSA there to survive for 24 hours waiting for someone else to pick it up. Now, to catch this bug you don’t have to put my nose microbes into your nose or even a cut because the little buggers can penetrate clean, healthy skin, leaving you colonized, or worse, covered in boils of Biblical proportions that could kill you. Either way, you then become the same potential Typhoid Mary I am.

Even if you have never heard of CA MRSA and don’t know a soul with it and have never read a story about it on the internet, it’s time we start thinking a little more about this cute button in the middle of our faces and try to keep our hands off of it. And never forget that hand washing is your best protection from everything except maybe AIDS. (Condoms work best there!) I kept passing on reading an article I kept seeing about proper hand washing figuring it was a no brainer until I finally read an article by Christina Jones. It takes fifteen seconds to kill the germs!! She advises singing Twinkle Twinkle to time it and I bet it feels a lot longer than you usually wash your hands! I sing terrible even with wonderful bathroom acoustics but I belt it out at every hand washing now, especially if I have touched my nose or yours.

Just think about it…