Patrick's Story

MRSA was an acronymn I hadn't heard before.
 
Before it became inexorably tied to my mother's life, that is.
 
MRSA can be a killer. It's important to learn all you can about this terrible infection, an infection that resists treatment.
 
My mother's MRSA story began to unfold in July 2002. I'd taken her to her regular doctor's visit. While I was seated in the waiting room, the doctor appeared and asked me to follow her back to her private office.
 
"I think your mother has had a heart attack," the doctor said to me. "We need to get her to a specialist."
 
The doctor assured me my mother was in no immediate danger, that the heart attack might have occurred weeks earlier.
 
"I'll schedule an appointment for her for a heart catheterization next week," the doctor said.
 
I then entered the examination room, expecting to see my mother frought with worry.
 
Instead she greeted me with a smile. "Let's stop for lunch on the way home," she said.
 
"Where?" I asked. I was amazed she didn't want to go straight home.
 
"Long John Silver's!" she exclaimed.
 
I bristled at this choice. "Mom," I said, "I simply refuse to take you to gobble down fried fish when the doctor just announced you've had a heart attack."
 
Mom smiled. "OK," she laughed. "I guess that it was a silly thought."
 
On the ride home Mom and I shared a good laugh about Long John Silver's. She'd turned the heart-attack suspicions into a comedy routine.
 
How I loved her. How I admired her for her inner strength.
 
A few days later my brother and I took Mom to a hospital 75 miles away for the catheterization.
 
One might think that the ride to the hospital would have been filled with dread. Mom would have none of that. It proved to be a festive ride. She regaled us with stories of our childhoods, and we laughed again over her Long John Silver's idea.
 
Mom walked into the hospital under her own power, refusing offers of a wheelchair.
 
That's just who she was.
 
The news after the catheterization was grim.
 
"She has three blockages," the doctor said. "One of them is 100 percent."
 
My brother and I were stunned. We looked at each other. Both of us were afraid to ask the next question.
 
"100 percent," I finally said. "What do we do -- and how has she survived with a 100 percent blockage?"
 
"Nature finds a way," the doctor replied.
 
Mom's surgery was scheduled the following morning.
 
The first thing I noticed when she emerged from the operating room is that her rosy cheeks had returned. The doctor's had fixed her heart and restored blood flow.
 
"She's going to be fine," the surgeon said.
 
This was a moment of maximum joy. Neither my three siblings nor I had seen any color in my mother's face for ages. We'd thought her increasing paleness was part of the natural aging process.
 
On the very evening of her surgery my mother was up walking in the halls of the hospital. It was simply unbelievable.
 
The doctors told us to expect Mom to be in the hospital for another five days or so. She couldn't wait to get back to her home and resettled in her old routine.
 
But that never happened.
 
My mother contracted MRSA through the incision in her chest from her heart surgery. No one knows precisely how she got the infection.
 
What is known is that several other heart patients in the same hospital wing became infected with MRSA.
 
My mother underwent surgery five times after she contracted the infection, in a desperate bid to save her life.
 
The infection was virulent; it even entered her bones.
 
Doctors removed her breast bone and part of her rib cage. And then they had to perform cosmetic surgery to get one side of her chest wall to bind with the other.
 
All of this weakened her immune system, which already was under attack. She grew increasingly weak. He respiratory system eventually started to collapse.
 
Then the doctors performed a tracheotomy and put her on a respirator. She battled valliantly for 110 days, surviving the transfer to two other hospitals.
 
MRSA. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. A Super Bug that resists standard treatments.
 
No matter what it's called, MRSA affects lives daily. Make sure you educate yourself about this nasty subject.
 
I am proud of my mother, proud of her fight. I'm writing this post on the fifth anniversary of her death.
 
She'd want everybody to know about MRSA.
 
Here's hoping you'll take some time to learn about it.
 
I'm smiling as I recall Mom's Long John Silver's comment. The MRSA memories, of course, are less happy.
 
Nature found a way to keep her heart pumping -- even with a 100 percent blockage.
 
It did not find a way with MRSA.
 
You honored us with your life and you valiant struggle, Mom.
 
Patrick Pretty

About Patrick Pretty: Patrick Pretty is the author of "Pluck Forever" and the webmaster of the "Master Of Eye Candy" Blog.
 
http://pluckforever.com

http://patrickpretty.com/blog.html