Please don't abuse antibiotics

[free_electron]

what's this got to do with electronics ? well it prevented me for enjoying my hobby ( and work) for at least 8 weeks now.

Mid december i got a tiny little scrape from a shower door handle on my back ( the door grazed me while closing ) . There was no blood so i thought i was fine. By the evening i had a red , warm, patch that was swollen about an inch diameter. the next morning it was the size of my hand , sore, and swollen.
I went to urgent care where they had to cut it open and clean it out. I basically had a 13 centimeter long abcess in my skin that was filled with MRSA bacteria (they cultured them and confirmed it was MRSA) This is a superbacteria where we have lost all but one antibiotic and are on the verge of losing the last defense as well. (the antibiotic needs to be injected in large doses to be effective, some people need 24 intravenous drip of this stuff and it is nasty antibiotics in terms of side effects )

MRSA kills ! if it defeats your immune system and gets into your bloodstream you can die in a manner of hours.
It took 16 days for the wound to heal. twice a day the wound needed cleaning , flushing it out with 50/50 hydrogen peroxide / isobetadine mix (hurts like hell) , packing with sterile material.

We got MRSA because people abuse antibiotics and or do not use them correctly.
- We either take antibiotics when not needed ( anything viral is useless taking antibiotics. but people still insist they need antibiotics)
- We do not complete the prescribed cycle. IF you are prescribed 10 days , DO NOT stop after 7 just because you feel fine and you dread the side effect ( some antibiotics cause gastrointestinal problems like.. you know .. having to use the porcelain throne very frequently)
the problem stopping early is that you have not eradicated all of the bacteria. the survivors have now proven to be more resistent to the antibiotics and there is the risk these now get out and start breeding elsewhere...

10 years ago MRSA was a rare occurence. one or two a month in a hospital. Now we are up to 2 or 3 a day !

So iwas 'cured' between xmas and new year.  yay ! January 3 : boom I get the flu. ok. fine 4 days and fever is gone. Day five : 104F ( 41C) fever ! that ain't normal..
Back to urgent care. After snot sample analysis, two x-rays, blood tests , blood oximetry and an ultrasound of my heart : H1N1 that evolved into double pneumonia.
I got this because my immune system was overloaded and recovering from the MRSA. result : quarantined for 18 days !
H1N1 induced pneumonia is very contageous. 5 minutes in a room with 10 people and half of them will be infected.
take 3 steps and you keel over, totally out of breath. i had one lung half full of fluid the other 1/3 full of gunk...

meanwhile my battery of soldering irons is screaming 'make something' (and my car is screaming 'drive me')
My last x-ray was yesterday and finally came back -clean- no residual damage (pneumonia can permanently damage lungs. very bad for scuba divers like me)

So , if you want to enjoy your hobbies for a long time : don't get sick and if you do use only antibiotics when they work and are necessary and use the prescribed amount completely. Do not stop early !

[IanB]

Well, that sounds awful. I'm glad you are better now.

[dr.diesel]

Take good care, my best wishes, thanks for sharing.

[wilheldp]

I don't take drugs for anything unless absolutely necessary.  That stands in stark contrast to people that are looking for a pill to fix every little thing.  The worst example other than antibiotics is Ritalin and Adderall for kids that are nothing more than hyper or disinterested.  That used to be fixed with a spanking, now it's fixed with drugs.

[Psi]

Yeah, i don't think engineers are the kind of people that need to be told off for misusing antibiotics.
They tent to be smart enough to know about the antibiotic resistance problem already.

It's more the general public that need to understand.

[David_AVD]

Someone I know got a scratch on her foot while stepping in/out of the shower.  She didn't follow the doctor's advice about the infection and treatments and ended up the the foot being amputated.

Continued issues and defiance of the doctors saw the leg amputated above the knee some time later.  Now she's got issues with the other leg where they took skin to graft onto the first stump.  At this rate she will be a double amputee soon.   

[jaxbird]

Good to hear you are doing better, hope you'll be fully rid of it soon.

I wouldn't blame antibiotic resistant bacteria on the regular folks. It's really the doctors prescribing it way too often who are the culprits, together with industries like the meat industry adding antibiotics as part of regular feeding as a preventive measure.

It's an ongoing battle of finding new types of antibiotics to battle the resistant strains, unfortunately the resistant bacteria are winning because of the widespread use.

[Marco]

Humans could stop taking antibiotics altogether at this point and it wouldn't matter for the spread of resistance, once those genes are in the pool they're never going away and resistance can be regained in a couple of generations. We're basically fucked ...

We should have had an international agreement to restrict sales of last line of defence antiobiotics decades ago and made veterinary use an international crime against humanity, instead politicians sold us (and their children) out to farma and agriculture.

[apelly]

Glad to hear you're back on your feet and OK.

[NiHaoMike]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRSA#People_in_contact_with_live_food-producing_animals

A 2011 study reported 47% of the meat and poultry sold in surveyed U.S. grocery stores was contaminated with S. aureus and, of those, 52%—or 24.4% of the total—were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics.

In summary, boycott factory farming and you'll reduce the risk of getting antibiotic resistant bacteria.

[manticore00]

Glad you're feeling better. My wife picked up a MRSA infection on her elbow from the gym a few months ago and overnight it went from what looked like a simple pimple to a huge red and angry splotch from her elbow to her wrist. Fortunately she responded well to the antibiotics but it scared the heck out of both of us.

[Stonent]

I was out for a week before Christmas of 2012 with Pneumonia. I had gotten a light case of the flu around the last week of November and then was fine, then mid December got it again with extremely painful coughing. The final straw was when I could hardly walk across a parking lot without wanting to faint and went to the hospital and they said I had to stay.

No fun.

[MatCat]

Really sucky!  I got Swine flu a few years ago and it was a month of hell, closest I ever felt I was to death (even more so then one time in my life someone pointed a gun at me), so I know how that feels!  Glad your feeling better!

[strangelovemd12]

I wouldn't have known about this had people not been wishing you well in the IRC channel.  (That post worked, I've cleared out of General Chat!)

Thanks for the words on taking the full antibiotics course, it's a huge problem in modern medicine!  As usual your post surpasses the average in quality.

[Tinkerer]

This is why when you get a scratch, you should wash it well. Who am I kiddin, I dont do that. haha
I dont get sick often(maybe I got sick like 2 years ago?) Had a dry skin split on my finger which I think may have gotten infected. Dont know, took a heck of a long week or two to heal all the way. All I did was make sure it was clean. Ended up hurting a bit and red but its healed now. Let me tell ya, lack of moisture is no help in healing.

[free_electron]

if you get a simple scratch that is NOT bleeding : DANGER . that's when that stuff burrows in. if it is bleeding your white bloodcells will react. if it's not bleeding the bacteria can burrow until it's too late. Always have a bottle of Betadine ready ( that brown stuff they use in hospitals) That kills anything. The other thing is clorhexidine soap. ( that is what surgeons scrub with before operating)

MRSA is a real pest. Hospital bacteria , "flesh eating bacteria" are all strains of S. Aureus. MRSA = Methicillin Resistant Staphilococcus Aureus

50% of the worlds population carries it in their nose. It doesn't do anything there. it is just present in your mucus where it breeds.
Get it in a wound …

MRSA loves warm , damp environments like locker rooms of pools and gyms, showers etc.

It is now to the point that, when you need to undergo surgery they test you if you are carrying MRSA in your nose. if present you get an ointment to eradicate it and they shoot you up with Rocephin ( which is the only remaining drug that can kill MRSA ) before surgery.

[scientist]

The problem is usually misuse of oral antibiotics, not topical antibiotic -- the cream you put on cuts isn't as much of an issue as long as you dispose of it properly and don't eat it. The oral antibiotics spread throughout the body, which is a problem.

Hope you get rid of that junk soon and hopefully we can evolve resistance to MRSA within a few decades.

[cybermaus]

I don't take drugs for anything unless absolutely necessary.  That stands in stark contrast to people that are looking for a pill to fix every little thing.

Which possibly means you may be among the group to more readily abandon the treatment because you feel fine?
I somewhat agree with your sentiment, but on the rare occasion you do start a treatment, then also do finish it.

[VK5RC]

free-electron; wishing you a speedy and complete recovery.
One of the problems with electronics is the tendency to spend a lot of time sitting down, this is not good for our waist lines, BP and glucose control i.e. diabetes,(this also increases risk of infection)
I would echo the previous comments of trying to
- avoid lot fed meats (animal antibiotic use far out weighs human use)
- complete antibiotic course if you can (if bad diarrhoea - contact the treating doctor)
- get a GOOD family doctor, and stick with him/her, if you change too often they are back to square one
- eat food (not chemicals), mostly plants and not too much
- take exercise regularly not too seriously
Rob. MB BS FRACP

[hans]

Hope you're getting better FE, being sick sucks, feeling sick sucks even more.

I've been out of the running since half November due to a (planned however) osteotomy femur. Basically they break your bone to put it in the correct position and fasten it. They turned my knee/feet 20degrees inward (done on each side now), which is the maximum before nerve pain becomes a problem, the surgeon told.

3 months later, still working on walking, so I am more or less limited to a living area that doesn't involve daily stairs...  However, this is my 2nd time, and it's going about as expected...
As I said; I didn't feel sick for about a week or 3 after all the medication worn off and the (Tramadol) painkillers had stopped. So in a way, it's not as bad as feeling constantly sick because of a bacteria or virus. I still hate getting colds now.., although my leg can't take >40kg and it can hurt like ****..

Before the surgery they were also talking about this bacteria. 5 days beforehand I had to use this "bacteria inferno" showering stuff, and also some nasal ointment to have these little fuckers killed. They said they don't even do screening on this, everyone needs to do it.
After surgery everyone gets like a couple (up to 4 for some) bags of antibiotics next to regular sugar/salt water infusion. They probably give so much because any bacteria that manifests itself inside the wound near a plate or artificial replacement joint can create their own little bacteria cave there with little resistance of the body.
They are very paranoid about any tiny wound before & after surgery, especially around the "target zone".
My dentists wants to know for the upcoming 10 years or so, that I have got a metal plate inserted. If he needs to do any "serious" work, he probably needs to prescribe extra antibiotics.


Besides; I've been told/read that lots of animals we eat (like chicken) are fed antibiotics to "survive". In the end they are crammed in an area in which chickens are barely able to move. So they grow and inherently a couple die. Each day "workers" have the ritual of "picking up dead chickens" until they are fed enough to sell (in like 6 weeks I believe). 
I am not certain how much of these antibiotics affect us, but I have a suspicion it's probably not very good for us.

[JuKu]

A couple of years back I had a real accident. Wouldn't been a big deal except for the infection. Two months later the doctor said "If this drug doesn't work, we have only one option left". I knew what he meant.

Bacteria are becoming a serious issue again.

[cyr]

Evolution is a bitch.

We are extremely lucky to live in a time where we have access to antibiotics, vaccines and so many types of effective treatments.
It's a scary thought that we may be losing one of our advantages.

[G7PSK]

Glad to hear you are on the mend Free Electron.
It is not just the overuse of antibiotics that is a concern but also overuse of antibacterials and antivirus cleaners in the home and elsewhere, all being heavily pushed to the users by the likes of Unilever etc.
 You do not even need these exotic cleaners in the home as ordinary soap and bleach will take care of most of the germs. There are already in the UK bacteria that have developed some resistance to these antibacterial cleaners but are still killed by soap due to having their waxy outer dissolved by the soap something no life form can withstand the same goes for bleach no bug is going to withstand it and develop resistance.

[steve30]

Glad you are better

I often wonder why people take antibiotics for trivial illnesses. I've lost count of the number of times people have told me I should go to the doctor to get some antibiotics. Although I'm on free prescriptions at the moment, I wasn't for the last two years, and couldn't have afforded to buy unnecessary medications, as I already spent enough money on my long term medications.

[babysitter]

Real soldering freaks cook their wounds with the iron 

Hot ironing wounds is a viable path to clean out, the famous french microbiologist Louis Pasteur was inspired to use vaccination against rabies after he experienced people from his home village got their biting wounds burned out.

If you ever need a form of ghetto treatment for biting wounds and have your soldering iron with you...

MRSA is a real problem in germany too, very bad managed by hospitals who spread them themselves by leaving out even simple hygienic measures like washing hands of their personal. In germany there are estimated 40k Deaths per year due to hospital-aquired infections, most of them believed to be MRSA.