MRSA Notes

It is especially sad when your child gets MRSA. I thought it was heartbreaking to see my husband go through this - I cannot fathom what it would be like to see my child go through it. Both of my children on occasion get staphylococcal skin infections, but luckily, we haven’t been though antibiotic resistant infections with them.

My dear friend Denise’s 2 daughters acquired MRSA after subsequent ear tube surgeries. My friend Theresa Drew lost her strong, heathy son to MRSA. There are so many children out there battling this illness, you have to be so careful.

The trouble with MRSA in children is tenfold. Speaking of community acquired MRSA - small children are notoriously difficult to keep hygenic - impossible really - and that is your first defense. Lots and lots of handwashing and disinfecting surfaces, and sometimes it just isn’t enough. I can’t tell you how many mothers I know who have MRSA, or a family member has MRSA, that spend their whole life working as hard as they can to keep their house clean and their family infection free. Myself, I spent the first 6 months after my husband came home bleaching everything that could be bleached and cleaning everything I could clean. I finally learned enough to stop driving myself insane and concentrate on keeping my kids healthy so their bodies can fight bacteria on its own. You can never eliminate all of the bacteria from your life.

You have a hard decision to make if you are trying to decide whether to get elective surgery for your children. On one hand, your child is getting multiple, unending ear infections, and on the other hand you could acquire the infection of a lifetime from surgery.

School athletic facilities are a prime place for MRSA to grow. Dark, damp equipment, sweaty pads put back into a locker without being cleaned and dried provide a breeding ground for bacteria. There are more and more places opening up all of the time that will clean your athletic equipment for you, check out CleenFreek for more information. I also worked on a brochure earlier this year that you can download about MRSA in Athletics and have collected many other resources as well.

I hope this general overview of MRSA in children will make you aware, educate you a little and hopefully give you some resources to learn more about MRSA.