MRSA Meltdown

This week I seem to just be all up in the gross and horrible ways people can die. Today is no exception, so bare with me folks, if you are not a fan of the gross detailed blogs, then walk away now.




Now I want to say right now, most, and I say most dead bodies are not harmful. Most viruses will die within a few days after their host has died. However there are a few diseases, viruses, and infections out there that give a mortician pause and proceed with extra caution.




Today I encountered one of those infections and saw the disgusting side of death, today I encountered MRSA aka Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus a form of staph bacteria that has become immune to antibiotics that would typically clear up a staph infection. MRSA can start off looking like small boils or pimples that can quickly turn into deep painful abscesses that require surgical draining. The ironic thing is that it is totally possible to contract MRSA from a hospital. If you get MRSA in the hospital you will be put into isolation...that is how serious this infection is. You really need to be careful with the skin-to-skin contact, needle pokes, and open sores. I was going to post a picture of what MRSA can do, but decided against it. If you are brave enough, feel free to Google Image Search MRSA.


To be honest, I have had already encountered a few MRSA infected people who have come into our care. Hell I remember transferring a woman who had MRSA and VRSA (Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) into our care. None of those cases were as severe as the gentleman I had the pleasure of working on today.


This guy, who was well over 300 pounds, was, I'm assuming, in the process of getting his right lower leg amputated when he died on the operating table. (I am assuming all of this from what I saw on the paper work we received).


As Mitch and I got him on the prep table, I began to unwrap his right leg, and immediately saw that something was wrong. He was missing a HUGE chunk of his calf muscle. As I got over the initial shock of what I was about to uncover, Dani came in and sported a pure look of disgust and told us to spray what was left of his leg with straight bleach. That is how serious we were taking this MRSA case. (not that we don't take every MRSA or communicable disease case seriously, but most of the time they are never this horrendous).


When I was done unwrapping this horrible package of mutilated skin, what I saw was astonishing. The top layer of skin was peeling away from his foot, and the calf muscle was all but eaten away. I could see where the doctors had begun their incisions and where they had planned to amputate his leg. There was nothing but a flap of skin where muscle once was by his inner lower thigh. I dare say, this was more horrible than the homicide victim I worked on this past Sunday.


As we began the embalming process, I wrapped his leg with a sheet of plastic because of the smell of rotting flesh. We drenched the festering wound with embalming fluid and Mitch slathered it with a special formaldehyde gel so that it would 'cure'. Other than that, the embalming went pretty straight forward.


Let that be a lesson to you kids, always wash your hands. There is a scary amount of stuff that you can catch by just touching people.


And here is a cliffnote about what has been going on in my 'love life' or lack there of. Saturday I went on a date with this guy, it went more or less fairly well and on Monday I was talking to Dani and Michelle about it. Something I said must have raised a red flag for Dani because she decided to CCAP him. (For those of you who do not know what CCAP is, it's a data base where you can look up someone and see if they have any court records in the state of Wisconsin). What Dani found was not good, I won't go into details, but I will say this: I have a zero tolerance policy about domestic abuse.

I mean, for shit's sake, the homicide victim was killed as a result of domestic abuse. So Bye Felicia, I won't be seeing you again!


So I have been striking out as far as the dating game goes, but I won't let that get me down. I am just very thankful that I work with people who care enough to do look into this kind of stuff and who have my best interest at heart.


If there is anything you learn from this blog, I hope it's:

1) Always wash your hands

2) Trust no one, and do a background check


Until next time.




__**UPDATE**

So I asked Dani what the deal was with MRSA Man and apparently he was a cognitively disabled individual who had extremely bad diabetes. He had gotten a cut on his leg and instead of telling anyone about it, it became so infected and horrible that he had to be taken to the hospital (which was last Friday) and he had died on Sunday because the infection; MRSA; was so deeply into his blood stream. So there you have it folks, Diabetes is one horrible disease, and you should always take infectious cuts seriously.