We're winning!

...against the staph infection that is! :-) Less than 24 hrs after starting the treatment plan it was looking much better and is now almost gone. Yeah! The cultures came back as a strain of staph that is normally resistant to augmentin, but combined with the topical cream it seems to be doing the trick. No MRSA for us, thank GOD!! Just in case you don't know what a newly brewing staff infection looks like:

Pretty nasty stuff, and that was just beginning. If your kid gets a rash like this don't wait to see the Dr.!

OK, it's late... as always... more updates coming soon.

What now??

Wow, so much has happened since my last post. I hardly know where to begin... I think I'll work backward from today.
Today Emma woke with an angry looking rash all over her bottom. I'm talking about a rash that makes you grab the phone and take the first available appointment at the pedi... something isn't right... kinda rash. I snapped a pic of it right away because 1) I've discovered a need for documentation of bizarre health phenomenon since people always tend to assume overreaction from parents, and occasionally bizarre things disappear by the time you get to the Dr. 2) I have a new fabulous camera and I'm taking pics of everything anyhow and 3) our old pedi is just an email away when I need him, (have I mentioned that I love him?)
So I take the first appt, a mere seven hours after my call, and sit looking through hundreds of rash pictures online, (a passtime I would not recommend to anyone, unless you enjoy being grossed out and feeling itchy all over for no medical reason), trying to figure out what we have. None of the pictures really fit.
I decide to email the pic to our "Dr. Steve" and see if his trained eye can identify it with ease. A couple of hours later I get his response, " Impetigo from Staph aureus. Glad you are getting an appt. Watch for deeper boils that my need to be incised". OK, that's not what I wanted to hear, but it is what I was afraid of.
We finally get in to see the new pedi's NP at 4 pm. The rash has already spread down her butt cheek and on to her thigh, and it is ugly! It had almost reached her infusion site on her upper butt cheek as well so I pulled it and moved it to a safer location on the opposite thigh. I know that staph in a site is bad news. She says we have two possibilities, 1) it's normal staph and it will respond quickly to antibiotics (and it's only spreading like wildfire because Emma has "issues"), or 2) it's MRSA, the oral and topical antibiotics aren't going to help and she's going to need IV antibiotics by tomorrow. Freaking fabulous!!

So now we wait on a culture that will take 48 hrs to determine what's growing in there. We have to have a follow up appt tomorrow by 2 pm if all is well, or by 10 am if things look worse. She wants to have plenty of time to work on hospital admission stuff since it's Friday... just in case.

She wanted to put her on Bactrum, a sulfa antibiotic that can treat some MRSA, but Bactrum has been a serious hypo inducer for Em in the past and no one knows why, (I'm talking 200 point drops in 15 minutes, passing out at big brothers school orientation kinda hypos), so we decided to try Augmentin first. After all, this may be easy to kill...
So I put her to bed tonight after her heat soak, antibacterial scrubbing, antibiotic cream, oral meds, etc and go down stairs to chill for a bit. Her bg is 180, she had a good snack before bed and all is well, so why is her pump screaming when I come back up the stairs 2 hours later? Because she's 45!!! WTH? ????????? I grab some glucose gel which she sucks down with minimal protest and wonder why on earth she's low. Nothing is unusual except the antibiotic, why is this happening? I sit on her bed and look around her room and notice that another med syringe is sitting on her bedside table. It's her kidney med and she didn't take it in the chaos of the evening.

Somehow the irony of the whole thing just hit me. I'm terrified to giver her the best antibiotics to kill the crap that's growing on her skin because of the lows, but the lows happen anyway, only I'm not expecting them so they go on much longer than they should.... And the most dangerous threat of these kinds of infections are that they can damage your kidneys and cause glomerulonephritis, which she already has, and now the chaos of actually treating the infection has stopped us from treating this "potential complication" that she already has. What can I do but cry, have another glass of wine and update my blog... there's much more to update, but I have to get some sleep. TTFN~