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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Be Careful in the Locker Room: My Staph Infection Story

MRSA infections are becoming a big issue in locker rooms.  From the NBA to little league baseball, nobody is safe from this horrible infection.  It is mostly antibiotic resistant and can lead to serious injury or even death.  I almost lost my leg to this infection.  Here is my story as told by me on my reddit account.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/MRSA_SEM_9994_lores.jpg


"Sure. It happened during the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school. I played a lot of basketball and was attending a camp over the summer at a local college in the Nashville area. The day after the last day of camp, I noticed what looked like a pimple on my right knee. I squeezed, puss came out, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The next day I woke up and my leg was swollen (around the pimple that I squeezed the day before). My mom and I decided to go to the doctor because it was a bit painful. They told me it was a spider bite, gave me a shot, and I was on my way.

The next day, I woke up and my leg had gotten worse. It was painful to walk and it was swollen up to mid-thigh. Puss was oozing out every time I touched the area. We met up with my doctor outside of his office (I believe it was a Sunday), and he said that I should go straight to the hospital. 

As soon as I arrived at the hospital, a doctor (ended up being my surgeon) drew a line around the swelled area with a pen so they could monitor it. Five hours later, the infection had spread up my leg about an inch or two past the line that was drawn. They put me on antibiotics to try to stop the swelling before they operated (the operation consisted of several incisions to give the excess puss and gunk a way to travel out of my body other than the small pimple hole). The infection wasn't responding to any of the treatment, and the doctors were getting worried. Talk about a terrible feeling. Finally, my body responded to the last strain of antibiotics the hospital had. 

I went under the knife a day later and still have a few pretty big (wide) scars on my leg because part of the healing process consisted of letting the incision grow together naturally so all of the infection would leave my body. Because of this, I didn't receive stitches. The scars look like shark bites.

During this process, I had one of the biggest needles I've ever seen stuck into the inside part of my knee/thigh (it had to be big enough to draw the infection out so they could test it). Oh and I watched a lot of Boy Meets World in the hospital. I like to think it helped. Ha! (about the only non-medical event that I remember about that six day hospital visit)."

Trey Frisbey
Boy Meets Sports
4/22/2014
Twitter: @boymeetsports

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