Slowly but surely

Wednesday Evening: Dr. Webb looked at it and decided it was looking good enough that the wick did not need to be put back in. Phew... No needles, no pokes, no cutting. Autumn was quite relieved that we quickly put her diaper right back on. Once her diaper is on she is quite alright in the Dr. office. He had gotten the lab results and confirmed what we thought, it was indeed MRSA. He explained that in Hawaii about 2/3 of staph infections are MRSA. It lives everywhere - on the risk lists you are at risk if you go to stores, schools, the beach, public places... Ummm... I know very few people who are not at risk. 1/3 of us has staph living on our skin all the time, it just doesn't usually burrow done and cause problems. So here in Hawaii it is possible that about 2/9 people has MRSA living on their skin. Yikes... I will post what I've learned about staph and MRSA in another post soon. Autumn just happened to be one of the unlucky ones to have it full on attack her. )-: Had we know what it was the first day we may have been to prevent all the pain and suffering of the past week.

Anyways, back to the Dr. visit. We found out the antibiotic that she was put on on Monday is the best one for killing the particular strain of staph she has. Praise the Lord. The Dr. instructed us to finish the sulphmethoxazole and then gave us another 5 days script for the clindamycin. We didn't need to do the shot that was for the strep again and the Dr. insured us that we would not be creating any antibiotic resistant strains of strep by not taking more, as strep lays over and dies very quickly and Autumn has other antibiotics killing bacteria. I've also read since then that the clindamycin is the best one for getting into all the cells. It is a heavy duty drug - used only for the "most serious infections" according to an article I was reading on antibiotics. He also said it wouldn't be a bad idea for Aaron and I to treat our nasal pharinx and finger nails with prescription ointment and Autumn's nails too. Although not a guarantee, but this would increase the likelihood of killing MRSA if one of us happens to be colonized.

The red spot under the original abscess was not shrinking as quickly as I liked, but the Dr. didn't think there was anything that could be removed at this time. We just needed to keep watching it. He said that unless it looked worse or something was off - temperature, temperament... we should take a day off and come back for a follow up on Friday.

Being our first time in 5 days without picking and hurting, we decide to celebrate with dinner at Krua - one of our favorite Thai placed in town. It was a nice relaxing reprieve. We also went to Walmart to get some supplies and try to get her prescription filled. We found out, per insurance requirement, we couldn't pick it up until Friday. Funny since they aren't paying for any of it.

That evening it kept looking slightly better, but then after a big poop, little red spots showed up )-: Yes, another yeast infection. I put the 1% clotrimazole on to see if I was right. Being on so many antibiotics and her not telling us when she soiled her diaper I was expecting it. It responded right away and looked better. I didn't see any on the abscess sore, so just put the ointment around it. Off to bed, we thought. It was like 10pm and Autumn was still bouncing off the walls. Her bed was still next to ours and after her night time routine, singing more she was still bouncing from her bed to ours, crawling on me, kicking our bed... after ample warning I moved her bed back into her room. After putting her in her bed twice as she was crying and crawling out, she finally settled down and we all slept.

Thursday: I have a full day of student's on Thursday's and so I was gone the full day. I tried to set Aaron and Autumn up with to do lists - when to take each antibiotic and ibuprofen, to eat pro-biotic yogurt... I'm glad Aaron appreciates the lists because I need to feel like I'm helping when I can't be home with her. I called every two hours and Aaron identified more red bumps on the abscess sore - I told him to get the fungal cream on it asap and every diaper change and it went away. Should have known, but I didn't want to put anything more than I had to on the red angry sore. We made it through the day with no temperature and just a slightly more whiney than normal Autumn. Praise the Lord! The red spot looked much the same and at one point looked like it had a golden crust on it. We hoped that was the body sucking the infection up to the surface of the skin.
This night I stayed up until 12 reading as much about MRSA and ways to control it as I could. I found some good information and look forward to sharing it. I even found a blog of a family that struggled with MRSA for over a year - in and out of the hospital and on medication almost non-stop. She has figured out how to manage their sores and outbreaks without needing medications for almost 2 years. I'm now in touch with her over email as I has some questions about her strategies.

Friday: The spot below the abscess was still not looking as good as I wanted it to. We decided to take her in for the follow up in the am in case there was something they needed to lance. Autumn fell asleep in my arms in the waiting room and woke when we got in the exam room for her temperature. It was 98.8, about a degree higher than her norm. I showed the Dr. the pictures we'd been taking of the changes and then I held Autumn while she took a look. She was please by the improvement and explained that the red spot and what we were feeling below the abscess was likely a spot where the staph had started to grow, then the body went to encase it and then attack it with white blood cells. Once the antibiotic started working, there was and is now dead tissue and other junk in there that needs to heal and may even push to the surface. She didn't think there was a very great likelihood that it would need lanced. We were grateful and hoping she was right about it all. We got home, got her med in her and I took off back to finish up my day at work.
That evening I started the prep work or

Saturday (Today): It looks better, but the progress is slow. Slightly smaller and less red. The spot below seemed softer today and less red too. We spent the entire day sanitizing the house. We washed every toy, book and doll in her room, cleaned the rugs (not the carpet yet), washed all the sheets, towels and clothes in hot bleach water, scrubbed and sanitized Autumn's bathroom and the kitchen, Aaron washed the horizontal blinds., sanitized the couches, chairs and table. I never dreamed trying to sanitize our whole hour could take so long. Tomorrow I still have plenty more, but the things I was most worried about are done. Her diaper bag, my purse, all the stuff we touch all the time - it is all bleached or wiped with 99.999% killing wipes. I'm most worried that we may have spread it somehow when treating her wound. Hopefully what we did got rid of most of the bacteria living in our house. We normally get about a B+ when it comes to house hygiene - we do a pretty good job, but after reading around how to best keep your home clear of staph, we will be stepping up our game. I plan to wipe down door nobs, computers, cupboards with trash cans and such most nights, we will do single use towel, change hand towels daily, spray our tubs with 10% bleach after every shower and clean the bathrooms 2x a week. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm concerned that Autumn may have got introduced to the bacteria in our tub. Like I said earlier, it lives everywhere, and we will never know exactly where the MRSA came from, but it is worth a try to prevent what we can. We will also try to come in and wash our hands first thing when we get home. Oh, that reminds me - I need to sanitize both our cars too. Sigh.... I know I'm being crazy, but it all seems worth the effort in case some of it helps. I even sanitized our belts. They are the only thing we touch before we wash our hands after using the toilet, but never get washed. The germaphob in me is raging right now. So that is where we are, Autumn is healing and I'm trying to figure out how best to handle future problems with MRSA and cleaning the crap out of everything around us.