Flu

[ColoradoTJ]

My wife and daughter had the flu. 7 days of fun there.

Season has been bad this go around.

[vossman]

99.4 now, making some progress.

[BlasterBob]

Since I'm still under treatment from the MRSA infection.

About year and half ago, I had a kidney and it's ureter removed down at the VA hospital in Albuquerque. Immediately after the procedure, I was placed in isolation and of course I asked what the hell gives. Told I had MRSA and each time a nurse or my wife entered my room, they had to be covered with surgical gowns so the MRSA wouldn't get spread. After I got all healed up, asked my Surgeon about MRSA and he said "Pffft, one out of every three individuals have it - don't sweat it".
Gman, how are you treated for this MRSA stuff??
Oh, the wife and I are on the end stages of this flu, cold, crud after three weeks of runny noses etc.
The older we get, the longer these things seem to last.

[Gman]

Gman, how are you treated for this MRSA stuff??

When I went into the ER with a high fever and severe muscle spasms 5 weeks after my initial surgery, they put me on IV vancomycin right away. I didn't have any warning except for the low-grade fever I had been watching for several weeks. The external wound healed up fine and looked totally healthy. They ran blood cultures and identified it as MRSA. My surgeon opened up the original surgical site again and removed some infected tissue, used some kind of instrument that's like a power washer to clean and disinfect down to the implanted hardware, removed the implanted bone growth stimulator, and closed me back up. The infectious disease doctor put me on IV daptomycin in the hospital. After my blood cultures were clear for 48 hours, they put a PICC line in my left bicep and sent me home.

I had weekly appointments with the infectious disease doctor, they'd draw blood for testing, and I would self-administer IV daptomycin through the PICC line every day for 8 weeks. They also put me on an old drug previously used for the treatment of tuberculosis, named rifampin. It's supposed to prevent the bacteria from generating what they call a 'biofilm' on the hardware that encapsulates the MRSA so that it can't be killed. I had all kinds of side effects with that med and it made me feel horrible. I felt like my recovery was going backwards. The doctor took me off rifampin after 3 days. It took at least 3 more days to get it out of my system.

After the 8 weeks of IV daptomycin, then you go on a course of oral antibiotics until the bone is fused to prevent any type of relapse. The preferred oral antibiotic is a sulfa drug, but I'm allergic to all sulfa drugs. The alternate course of antibiotics is doxycycline, which I take twice a day.

The bone will take 6 months to a year to fuse. I'm scheduling the CT scan to check fusion progress at 6 months right now.

Hope that helps.

[vossman]

Wow.

[SamuraiCO]

Yep MRSA not anything to sneeze at. Stands for Methylcillin Resistant Staph Aureus. Means is resistant to most antibiotics, spreads fast, very hard to treat.

As for flu....still a crap shoot every year. Was less than 50% effective. You can still get even with a shot but the shot will help your immune system ramp up faster and get over faster.

As for Tamiflu and the generic out...seems to be a price point. If around $60 or less most purchase. If more than $60 then they will ask if needed. All it does is help to get over the symptoms maybe a day or two earlier. Still sucks for 5-7 days. Personally I would not waste my money on it.

[BushMasterBoy]

Got the flu shot. Only had the flu twice this season. Usually I get it three times. I'm still suffering the after effects a month later.

[Gman]

2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Hope you feel better soon!

[TheGrey]

I don't think it was the flu that I got- it's that damn two-part cold with the Cough That Never Leaves.

[Gman]

There's been norovirus and I know several people that have had pneumonia. There's also the 'heavy cold' that's been going around. You think you're done with it and it hits you again in a week.