May 12th, 2007 by Rhoda
I have read several times in MRSA Resources about people who didn’t get rid of their MRSA until they moved. My daughter moved last week and she and Kirk are both free of boils for the first time. 
I don’t think it is gone yet but I do believe it is in remission from the move and is in a place where it could be eradicated. Now, here is the problem: I haven’t found a doctor who will treat MRSA that is not active so this period of time when they are “just” carriers will be missed as an opportunity to rid them of the disease! I have always hated the regulation of meds when it came to something like this, when I know exactly what antibiotic to use and I know it is needed but I have to have someone in a white coat agree with me and write a prescription to get it. My brother, who lives in Texas, has been known to go across the border into Mexico to avoid this problem. There are medications available over the counter there that require a prescription here. Back when Tagamet was an expensive prescription drug he would go get it for me in Mexico and at a fraction of the cost of the prescription in the US and yes, it was definitely real Tagamet. So, does anyone know if Doxycycline is available in Mexico and can someone give me a ride there?? That would be problem number two if I find it is available in Mexico; I don’t live anywhere near Mexico and have no contact with that brother.
I suppose I might have to just enjoy this gift of remission and pray very, very hard that it is a permanent remission or miraculously GONE. I will continue to try to find someone who will prescribe the antibiotic nose spray Bactroban and Doxycycline for them. In the mean time, I am being careful what I take over to their apartment from their things in storage, washing and cleaning thoroughly everything I take over there. I also got them a huge jug of Germ X and they religiously sterilize their hands as do we when over there. Pray for us that this is the end of the nightmare. They are feeling much better and both talking about getting a job. Jami is applying for jobs all around where they live while Kirk is planning to go into business with a friend. Whatever is to come, we are very grateful for this remission and all of the prayers that I believe made it possible. All of our family and friends have been praying but I believe the most potent prayers have been the ones that come from strangers who have read about us here. Thank you all and God bless you and all that you do. See you later!
Posted in A Mother's Story having 2 comments »
May 9th, 2007 by Rhoda
I did it. I finally found an apartment for my daughter that I can afford and that she could hopefully afford on her own eventually. I had a real good moment yesterday while renting the apartment. I went alone to rent it and the manager wanted to see Jami so I went to the hotel to wake her and told her that I needed her to get up and clean up. She said, “OK Mom, I’ll go to the Methadone Clinic,” and I burst out laughing and said, “That’s great! but I just meant I need you to get dressed and do your hair to meet your new apartment manager!”
Later we talked and she was serious about the Methadone Clinic but she has been smoking Marijuana to ease off the heroin and they won’t take you there if you have Marijuana in your system (who makes these rules???) so we either have to wait, or find her a private doctor to do it for us, or she has to go cold turkey. I have some Methadone my doctor gives me for pain that I could use but then what would I use for pain? Maybe I could go to the Methadone Clinic but I suppose you have to have Heroin in your system…
At lest I have her here in Omaha finally where I know the county system well enough to get her some kind of help for her MRSA and whatever else she needs. There is even a system that the county will pay her rent but it takes a couple of months to get in the program. I will sign her up for it just to be safe but hope she will be able to pay her own way within a couple of months. Her apartment manager advised her to get on the county system and go back to school which is an excellent idea, too, but he knows nothing of the hurdles we have to cross first.
I am extremely excited to have a chance to get her CA MRSA treated properly!!! Also, I have read of may cases where victims couldn’t get rid of CA MRSA in their family until they moved out of the infected home. Maybe we lost some bugs in the moving! I have all of her belongings in a storage room and plan to clean and disinfect everything before I take it over to her.
So, here’s to a fresh start and hopefully the beginning of the end of this war with MRSA and drug addiction. Pray with me, please!
Posted in A Mother's Story having 1 comment »
May 5th, 2007 by Rhoda
I have been paying for my daughter and her boyfriend to stay at a hotel for the last three nights and am planning to rent them a room to stay at for a couple of months where I plan to help them with their MRSA and drug addiction and I can feel everyone looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Unspoken questions about if I am enabling their problems and why don’t I practice a little tough love and let them live on the streets or in a tent like they were talking about doing. I was really planning to let them try the tent thing but then it has been cold and raining since they lost their apartment and I didn’t have the heart to put them through that. I have been homeless and living in a tent many years ago after losing everything when my youngest daughter was crippled in an accident, and I remember sitting in a leaking tent feeling helpless and miserable and wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I was saved by a nice elderly woman I met who had an empty house for rent that she let us move into without paying until I got on my feet a bit. It didn’t “spoil” me but taught me gratitude and to give others a helping hand, too. And I’m not seeing any dependence developing in my daughter and her boyfriend either. What I’m seeing is extreme gratitude and shame to have ended up in the position to need my help. I have confidence that they are both good enough people to gain from this and be better people and learn to not let this happen again to them. They learned what good friends all of their drug buddies were when they went down. No one lifted a finger to help us clean out the apartment everyone had stayed at at one time or another. We went back for something we forgot a few hours after taking the last load of things out of there that we could store at my place and found the apartment stripped completely clean like locusts had been through. A couple of their “friends” were still there scavengering for more leave behinds. Jami cried when she saw them and the apartment.
I have spent a lot of time with them at their hotel talking and we talk about getting off the drugs and starting a better life. I think they almost feel obligated to do so and I think that might be more motivating than the “tough love” let them live on the streets attitude would have done. I could be wrong. But I just might be right. I almost wish the people looking at me funny right now would actually confront me so I could give this opinion or say something in my defense. Jami and Kirk have their heroin habit down to $12.50 a day each which is a huge improvement and a place they can see quitting from. They are much more clear when I talk to them about their MRSA now and are willing to do more to take care of it and are more understanding of the fear I and the rest of the family have of catching the disease. I honestly think I can make this dependent time constructive for them. I feel Kirk feeling like he as the man should have prevented this from happening to them as well as his shame at having me step in and take over. Maybe just this once or a thousand times, maybe extra love can conquer the demons instead of tough love. Love and a lot of prayers for guidance! I’ll see you guys around the blog. Have a good one!
Posted in A Mother's Story having 1 comment »
May 4th, 2007 by Rhoda
Yep, folks, that is not a misprint! Illinois is about to pass a bill that will require all hospitals to test high risk patients for MRSA!! What a difference from where I live and have to explain what MRSA is to ER attendants! Could this be the beginning of a dream come true? Is this country going to publicly recognize the fact that we have a serious problem with MRSA? Could it mean that doctors everywhere won’t treat us like we’re talking about the common cold when we express fear about MRSA? Is this the beginning to the end of the war with MRSA? I don’t know about you but I think I am going to write to all my state’s people and brag about the measures being taken in Illinois like it just became the greatest state in the nation!
Posted in IN the News having no comments »
May 3rd, 2007 by Rhoda
Jami lost all three of her daughters because of her drug addiction but was smart enough to have married two excellent men who are now raising her girls. The sad part is that we live in Nebraska and her oldest daughter is in California and the younger two recently had to move to Minnesota where their father is from and found work after getting out of the Air Force a few months ago. Jami has two sister s who each have a daughter so Jami tries to fill that void by loving her nieces extra and loves that they adore her. Unfortunately, she hasn’t been able to see either of them since she got the MRSA. My middle girl won’t let her kids even come to my house since I visit Jami she is so scared, and with good reason, but my youngest daughter understands the disease to not totally freak out so her daughter got to see Aunt Jami briefly today. Jami is saying at a hotel so I felt it safer to visit since the place isn’t covered in little microbes yet and I was hyper-vigilant of every touch during the visit. Oh, you should have seen Jami’s face when I walked in with little Jessalynn!! I surprised her with the visit and their reunion was beautiful. Jessalynn has asked for her Aunt Jami daily for months and they talk on the phone whenever Jami has access to a phone but neither will ever forget this visit!! Jami has no open sores right now and I watched her closely to make sure she didn’t touch her nose without sterilizing her hands and kept wiping Jessalynn’s hands with hospital wipes throughout the short visit. I hope this ray of sunshine in Jami’s life will spark more fire under her to get the MRSA properly treated. Until tomorrow then!
Posted in A Mother's Story having no comments »
May 2nd, 2007 by Rhoda
I just read that they are using maggots to treat MRSA with success in an experiment in the UK. It makes perfect sense and has been done for ages just not in these ages. The maggots eat rotted flesh as well as bacteria and leave the healthy skin alone. BUT I just don’t think my daughter is going to go for me putting maggots in her boils!! I also read another story recently about them using antimicrobial peptides from the American bullfrog to treat MRSA. So I guess you never know where the cure is going to come from and you have to wonder about how these ideas get started. Like the gerbil for sex thing. I’ve always wondered how in the hell that ever got started. Did someone accidentally sit on a gerbil and go, “Oh, that feels nice!” or perhaps it started as a sick dare and became a sick fad. Whatever, I am glad to see we are looking under every stone for a cure for MRSA somewhere in the world but I do wish more people would lift that Phage Therapy stone!!
Posted in A Mother's Story, IN the News having 1 comment »
May 1st, 2007 by Rhoda
Today my daughter was officially homeless as of 1 pm when her eviction went to court. We had almost everything loaded up into my van by then. Her boyfriend had found a bunch of copper wire in his dumpster diving that he stripped and sold for a hundred dollars and rented them a hotel room for tonight. After renting the room and getting heroin for the day they had twenty dollars left so I know I will likely be moving them somewhere again tomorrow.
It breaks my heart that I can’t bring her home with me but I just can’t expose my household, especially my five year old granddaughter, to CA MRSA. Jami wears light summer clothing now that it is hot and I can see the tiny boils all over her exposed skin and I know Kirk has as many but they are harder to see because his skin is a little darker and a lot of it covered in tattoos. I talked to Jami a little bit today about keeping the boils covered with tea tree oil soaked bandages and she said that she would try it but I’m not too sure she will do it or be more careful with it. She says that they take very good care of their MRSA except for not getting antibiotics but I don’t see any special soaps or anything around to fight it except the tea tree oil I gave them that they haven’t tried yet.
This month I am getting a settlement from SSI that I planned to set myself up with but I think I am going to set up something for Jami instead and take dare of her MRSA with it. Mostly because my middle daughter told my disability judge about me having an addicted daughter, and that she, Jeanette, was afraid I would “blow” all my money on trying to save Jami, Jeanette was appointed my guardian and Payee to control how I spent my settlement money but this month I was given back the right to manage my own money and I have decided. I am going to “blow” it to try to save Jami’s life. I’m gong to put her in a room for rent her in Omaha where I can get some of her medical needs paid for by the state and county and get rid of the MRSA whether she gets off of the heroin of not, whether she gives up her boyfriend or not. I don’t think I could face myself as person or as a mother if I didn’t. I still get my monthly disability and can and will survive. Maybe there will be some money left for me to do something to better my own life but right now there is no better life for me with my daughter dying. They won’t be able to afford the hotel much longer if they can even get together another night’s fee. I will force her in this way to move to Omaha, she currently lives across the Iowa border in Council Bluffs, and I don’t know Iowa well enough to help her and it is getting to be too much to drive there every day.
Rhoda has a plan, folks, and she’s gonna make it work dammit!!!!! P.S. God willing!
Posted in A Mother's Story having no comments »
April 30th, 2007 by Rhoda
I feel terrible that I tend to treat my daughter like a leper with her MRSA because I am so terrified of the disease and it is so contagious and she doesn’t take any precautions to protects others. I believe she would take more precaution if her mind weren’t constantly clouded with heroin. She came out to the car as we were about to leave the other day and caught Jeremy and me sterilizing our hands before heading home. She asked for a ride to the local free food place on our way out of town and we took her but she was sad and subdued on the ride. She would be more upset if she saw us when we get home. We strip leaving the clothes we wore inside out and sterilize ourselves before coming into contact with anyone else.
Her disease is progressing oddly but the fact that she does drugs will make her case non text book according to most doctors I talk to, but then again, all cases I hear of start differently and progress differently. She started with four golf ball sized boils on her back side and then started getting a lot more all over her torso that were about half that size. The last three big ones have been on her underarm, hip, and ladies part, (OUCH!) and now she is getting tiny ones everywhere that are still just as painful but very hard to spot. That makes it harder for me to avoid them as she doesn’t cover them like she should. In fact she touches them and touches me without worry because she believes that only the puss is contagious when actually even touching her skin can pass it on as the nose and skin become colonized with the bacterium. It was a nightmare to be around her when she had a bad cold recently! I still hug her and she kisses me good bye every time I visit and I just can’t stop these things. I want to hold her and just cry and cry for my baby!
Her father called me last night and asked me if I would sign with him to have her committed for Heroin addiction and not caring for a deadly disease and I said Sure if he can set it up. If he manages this it will make her feel very betrayed but could save her life and all of ours as well. I have tried and found it not easy to commit a person these days but if he has found a way to do it I will help him to save her. I have hoped that as she is about to be homeless after Wednesday this week that she will commit herself. She is aware that her life is a mess and no life at all. She lives with her drug dealer boyfriend , who also has MRSA, and he is so weak and ill and strung out he can hardly do anything anymore and all they do besides get high is fight. I took her to the ER a few days ago for a broken finger from one of their fights and she talked a lot about getting out of it all. I just pray that one way or another , she does get out, get treated for heroin addiction and finally have her MRSA properly treated before it is totally hopeless to do so if it isn’t already. I greatly appreciate all of the comments and notes I receive from everyone wishing us well in this war. I pray for an end soon! Thank you all!
Posted in A Mother's Story having 2 comments »
April 28th, 2007 by Rhoda
I took my daughter to the ER last night or a broken finger and a UTI. While we were checking her in I asked if they needed to be notified if she has MRSA.
“Has what?”
“MRSA. M-R-S-A.”
M-R-S-E? I can check her records.”
“No, Mam. M-R-S-A.”
She checks her computer and finds there is no previous note of it although we have been there before so she scribbles it on a piece of paper for us to give the admitting nurse which we dutifully did. She glanced at it and went on with getting us registered and proceeded to put us in a double room with another patient. Then when they came in to examine and work on my daughter not one of them thought or bothered to even put on gloves or wash their hands before leaving the room. I wonder if they ever did before going on to other patients.
Why didn’t I make a fuss at the time instead of calling to file a complaint today? I suppose it is because my daughter was in their hands and I hate to piss off the people who are going to make her feel better and it definitely seems to piss off medical professionals to correct them. It was 3 a.m. and I wanted to get out of there some time before day light. Whatever, I see it as unconscionable in that daylight. I should have yelled loudly to save the lady in the next bed and the patients seen after my doctor and nursed left with MRSA on their hands. Of course, I have found their attitude here in Omaha to be pretty much, Oh, we are all carriers any how!!! Which is another reason I didn’t speak up. Still wrong. I still should have. I have to be stronger than the opposition in this war even if it means staying up all night and going from hospital to hospital. I should use every opportunity to spread the word instead of the disease no matter how late at night or how mean everyone might be about being corrected. I will do better!!!! See you!
Posted in A Mother's Story having 1 comment »
April 26th, 2007 by Rhoda
Looking back over this blog I have thought a few times that it sounds like I hate living in America or that I would be better off in another country. I talk about how great it would be to have MRSA on a political platform here like it is in Ireland, but neglect to say I am glad I’m not there where MRSA is running so rampant because they were so unclean in their hospitals to begin with. I comment a lot about how much MRSA makes the news in the UK but wouldn’t want to deal with their medical system instead of our any day! At least I know that if I have MRSA and the money or insurance or medicaid and sometimes without anything I can get MRSA treated or have needed surgery without going on a waiting list. I feel the need to publicly chide myself a bit for neglecting to say we still live in the best country in the world. Yes, I want to see MRSA a political platform in the next elections. (Won’t hold my breath.) Yes I would like to see more headlines about MRSA. (Happening slowly.) And yes, I definitely would like to see Phage Therapy being given a chance for MRSA and like diseases in this country. (Maybe in thirty years!) What really brought this home to me is when I noticed that my friend Christine and I had both written about an article published in USA today. She raved that we were getting US coverage and I picked on the wording, some inaccuracy about how far CA MRSA has gone into our community. I certainly don’t want to ever lose sight of the bright side or to lead anyone to the dark side! The whole MRSA story is dark enough. I need to lighten up a touch but not too much because I still believe that squeaky wheels get oiled first!! See ya!
Posted in A Mother's Story, IN the News having no comments »
