Friday's Update

Today is another good day! She has officially had no fevers for over 24 hours which means great improvements. The doctors have started saying we might get to go home Monday, maybe. Yay! They still have to inspect the wounds from the surgery, and these pictures are of her sporting her "cast" and playing her favorite game here in the hospital Let's Go Fishing.



One thing I wanted to mention too is that I know a lot of people have been concerned about catching mrsa themselves either directly from Sammy or just in general, so I wanted to share a little bit about what the doctors have told me with you so you have no worries.

First of all, they have no idea how Sammy was infected with mrsa. They said about 1/3 of the population already carry mrsa on them without having any symptoms. That is called colonized. They said Samantha could have picked it up anywhere - from a McDonalds playhouse, to the park, to a random bathroom - anywhere. My aunt said you would be surprised what different types of staph is on the bottom of your shoe alone. The reason why she ended up sick was just bad odds. One doctor referred to it as the perfect storm. All of the conditions happened at just the right time, which caused the infection to get to her blood, to her muscle, and then into the bone. Something as simple as brushing her teeth could have introduced it into her blood stream. Simple hand washing, and disinfecting will help to prevent the spreading of it, but all in all, not much you can do. Plus it is not something you necessarily need to worry about unless you have an auto immune disease that prevents your body from fighting anything off.

Second, once Samantha's surgery wounds heal, she is not contagious. She is on antibiotics and will be through iv for four weeks at home, with an additional two weeks of oral antibiotics. The blood infection has cleared (the hospital has been doing blood cultures to verify) So not even her blood is considered contagious. The reason why mrsa patients have to basically monitor it thier whole lives is that once it gets into the bone, it is extremely hard to get rid of the mrsa completely. So there is a possibility that it could reenter her blood stream from the bone, which would again make her blood contagious, but that would come with symptoms like swelling and redness and fever. Again, the way to prevent it from speading is simply disinfecting and hand washing. Stuff we all do now. She will not spread it by drnking from the same cup, or even bathing with someone.

Thirdly, I asked what the chances are and what procautions we need to take since we spend a lot of time with other kids, and they said none (very ferverently I might add) other than simply hand washing and disinfecting any cuts (neosporin is an antibiotic cream). They have had us sharing a room with several different kiddos while we are here, and they said they wouldn't do that if they had any concerns. Hope that helps more than that hurts. I know after this whole experience I just want to place my kids in a bubble and have them germ and bacteria free all the time. You may see us a little more worried about disinfectant and such, but know that I would never ever want to go through this again, nor would I want anyone else to go through it either. I also know how little control I truely have over what God has planned for my life and the life of the children he has blessed me with. If any doctors start telling me different I will be sure to update you all.