MRSA, VRSA

Wednesday I had a small red scrape or rash on my chest.  Yesterday I looked down and there were 2 more similar marks a few inches away and the first mark had gone all crusty.  I called the doctor.  This morning when I got up another one had gone crusty.  One of them was very round, the original one, and I thought, "stupid, it's ringworm, I don't need to go to the doctor."   I tell the doctor I think I have ringworm and she tells me she thought, from the message I left, that I had MRSA!  Apparently my verbal description fit the profile.
(I don't have MRSA.  Or ringworm.  She didn't actually know what it was but she wasn't worried.)
But it is pretty scary.  Obviously I was exposed to MRSA bigtime when my dad was dying of it.  I don't think it has an incubation period of over 3 years, but I never considered back then that I could GET it.  I worried about being a carrier and GIVING it to people. (Who knows, I might be a carrier.)
For those who have been living in a cave, MRSA (pronounced Mer-sa) is an antibiotic resistant bacteria (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) that is usually treated with a drug called Vancomycin. That drug made my dad sicker, plus his MRSA was inside him, which is what conspired with his Alzheimer's and other brain damage to kill him. 
My mom's mother's uncle (my great-uncle) died of MRSA too.  He had a hip replacement that broke and when they took it out he got MRSA in the incision.  My friend's aunt just had to have her arm debrided practically to the bone to get rid of a "surface" MRSA infection--she is still in a nursing home months later.
That friend tells me that she learned of a dreadful new creature. Honestly I thought she was kidding, because it is the stuff of nightmares, but she is not kidding.  VRSA is Vancomycin-resistant MRSA.  As in, no treatment.  It comes in 3 flavors: VRSA, VISA and hVISA.
It is very depressing.  My dad's story, as bad as it was, can be made worse but changing a single letter--a V for an M.  And I'm sure that somewhere, it's happening to someone else's father, mother, grandparent, spouse...Just awful to contemplate.  News articles keep saying there are miracle drugs coming, they will cure Alzheimer's Disease.  They were saying that about cancer 30 years ago when I was a kid and that's not cured yet. I honestly don't hold out hope for AD.

Sad news for a friend

My friend's grandpa, who lives out of state, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few months ago. He is also diabetic and now has MRSA in some of his diabetes sores. It's gone systemic, like it did with my dad, and this week they put him in hospice.
All I could tell her was how sorry I am. She is probably not going to be able to see him again before he dies. I'm not sure if that's good or bad...he's unconscious and wouldn't know either way.
Sad day.

149: update

The nursing home has finally taken my dad off all his heart medicines and Alzheimer's medicines. Now he's on a BP medicine (new, not sure why as he's never had a BP problem before), anti-seizure medicine (but reduced from initial dosage), an antibiotic for the MRSA, and I think one other thing, can't remember what.
Yesterday he was holding his head up--not all the way, but no longer chin-on-chest. We were there at lunch. He is still "holding" his food, meaning he accepts it into his mouth but doesn't swallow or chew. I got him to eat his vanilla pudding but it seems pointless. Am I not just prolonging his life by making him eat pudding?
His fever is down to 99-100 from the 102 it was for days. His eye is no longer bright red and both his eyes point in the same direction again. He looked at me a few times and while there wasn't exactly recognition, he was definitely LOOKING, not just randomly aiming his eyes toward a sound or shape. He did something with half of his mouth a couple of times that might have been meant to be a smile.
I held his hand and when I wanted to leave he wouldn't let go. My husband thought I was exaggerating so he came over and tried to remove my hand from my father's and was amazed at how strong his hands are.
Last week when he was really bad, his hands were so hot they were uncomfortable to hold. Now they were regular hand temperature. I have a feeling any HBP he has is related to either the extended fever or the swelling in the brain (if there is indeed any).
My grandmother, now living with my mom, has given up her cane--she used it rather ostentatiously the first few days, groaning with the effort it took her to walk anywhere. She took over, spreading her stuff throughout the house, not just in her room (which was my room once). She talks constantly, eats constantly, and is always fussing with something. She is making my mom insane. She doesn't like to be left alone but she doesn't want to go anywhere so my mom is back to being trapped in the house. Grandma has the TV on so loud I can't stand to be anywhere in the house, and she sits a foot from it with her sunglasses on. (She has macular degeneration.) And it is a little annoying for me that I can't see my mom alone. We have to conspire to keep things from my grandmother--how bad my father is, how bad my grandmother's brother's cancer is--otherwise she flips out and makes herself sick. And how can we do that when she's always THERE?

148 A superbug is eating my daddy

Turns out that while my dad was in the hospital last time, he picked up that nasty drug-resistant infection (MRSA-the so-called Superbug). No one bothered to tell us this of course. So that explains his 102 degree fever for almost a week that they can't get to come down. My mom's uncle died of a MRSA infection after a hip transplant, and so did one of her cousins after a different surgery.
My mom and I went to a care consultation meeting yesterday, to talk about his state and what to do. We advocated getting rid of his Alzheimer's medicine and reiterated that he was supposed to be off his heart medicine by the end of September. But the staff doctor there won't take him off the heart medicine, and he has to see a psychiatrist for a psych consult before they will take him off the Alzheimer's meds. Is that not outrageous? He is almost totally non-functional. What is the point of giving him these medicines? Let him have a heart attack! Let his brain rot more! Can he really get any worse without dying? (Please, those of you who know the answer, kindly refrain from telling me if the answer is "yes"!)
His eyes are going in two different directions and one of them has gone all blood red. The head nurse thinks he is still bleeding from the intracranial hemorrhage--brain swelling and pressure would do that to his eyes. He was unresponsive, head down as far as it would go, drooling, both times we went to see him. He held our hands for a moment. His skin was so hot it was uncomfortable to touch.