Never Clean Again
Ahhh, were this a post about a miracle cleaning solvent or a lottery win…. But, no, it’s a healthcare post.
The title is the stream of words I heard from a doc after she got off the phone with ID -Infectious Disease docs. A routine aspirate culture- intended as a “pre-” to an eventual “post-” after a new neb was added- grew out a resistant bacteria of type “ESBL”. Rather than bore you with the details, I’ll give you the punchline: my kids will be “on precautions” every time we enter a doc’s clinic or hospital for the rest of their lives. Because they picked up this bacteria at one of those clinics or hospital trips they’ll “never be clean again”. Nice, right??
We have completed one course of higher level antibiotics, are waiting for the end of the other kids’, then we get to do 3 more aspirates to see if the kids are “clear” of the bacteria- 3 negatives in a row will be “clean” but the hospitals will never treat them that way again. And every time there is an infection, we have a more limited choice of antibiotics since the ESBL trait is often picked up by EVERY bacteria once the first one develops this resistance- “superbugs”.
On top of the 21% mortality rate & the possible transfer of the characteristic to others who play together everyday, it’s been a fun couple weeks.
