Adventures in Healthcare- Spider Bites Send Me to Hospital, Infected with MRSA from Surgery

Doctoring myself, I applied Neosporin and a bandaid on one bite mark that was on the side of my breast- to keep my bra from rubbing the red bumps. Only expecting an uncomfortable day, I left my house for work.

Some hours past, I started feeling nauseous and the bite marks began to hurt. I pulled up my shirt to show my co-workers and the ohs and ahs sent me in the restroom to check. The girls at work were the first to suggest it could be spider bites.

The red places now looked infected with watery pus inside. I was aching all over with flu-like symptoms. A sick headache, chills, and everyone's concern sent me home early.

Late that evening the pain was so severe, accompanied with fever and a rash, drove me to the emergency room at the hospital. The nurse in triage said my temperature was 102. She said the blisters would need to be lanced.

Five hours after arriving, laying on an examination table in a hospital gown, the doctor on call strolled in around one a.m. My arm up over my eyes to shield the bright light to my aching head, my breast with the wounds exposed.

The doctor asked how was I doing. Not a brain surgeon, obviously. She proceeded to ask me questions, none of which pertained to my injury. "Was I in a relationship?" she asked. My inability to form complete sentences must have persuaded her to drop the attempt at small talk.

The doctor began drawing a circle around the abscess on my breast with a black sharpie. She told me if the redness crossed over that line to return to the hospital. She ordered an antibiotic drip and wrote two prescriptions for me. The doctor concluded, I had been bitten by an undetermined type of venomous spider.

A nurse led me to a different room for the medication. Hours later, after being hooked up to the IV, I rolled down the hall attached to the machine to seek help. "Oh, we forgot about you." the nurse on duty admitted.

Released to go home, I was unable to keep any food or the antibiotics down. The redness had crossed over the black circle the emergency doctor had drawn on my breast but I wasn't about to go back there. I went to see my regular doctor when his office opened the following morning. I was in tears from the pain by the time he came into the room. One look under my arm, he told me to immediately get to the hospital.

The emergency room is no place for a sick person.

As luck would have it, this was the second day of January. My insurance coverage beginning a new calendar year on the first. Being an otherwise healthy person, I had chosen the highest deductible of which zero had been met in one day. Happy New Year, to me.

I was prepped and taken to surgery. The surgeon told me I shouldn't have been sent home in my condition. He said the antibiotics could not touch the infection, that it needed to be surgically removed.

The most horrendous part of the whole ordeal, even all this time passed, can't be erased from my memory. The yanking out of the packed gauze from the surgery incisions. I don't know which was worse, the removal several times a day or the packing down of fresh after pulling up the used with bits of my flesh. I know, it was to remove any infection, the wound having to heal from the inside. That knowledge still didn't make it any easier to endure. I learned very quickly to do it myself, being some nurses missed their calling as sadists.

Following surgery, when I was worse instead of better, the doctor ordered more tests. I still could barely hold food down or my head above the pillow. Well wishers were beginning to give me that look as if I might not make it. The test results came back I had contracted the MRSA bacteria [staph infection] during surgery.

During my two week hospital stay, I was on IV antibiotics and pain killers. The infectious disease doctor said I wouldn't be allowed to go home until he was assured my insurance would cover the only antibiotic drug that would kill this "super bug".

Giving him every assurance, I would get the prescription filled, since I wanted to get out of there so badly. A hospital is absolutely the worse place to get well in. Who can rest with them waking you up in the middle of the night to drain blood like vampire bats? One nurse remarked cheerfully, "Well, at least all your future hospital stays, you will have a private room, as a MRSA carrier now."

My insurance company would not cover the experimental antibiotic drug the doctor prescribed. At one hundred dollars a pill, I could not afford the two week supply needed. When I called the doctor, he said I would have to return to the hospital to receive the drug intravenously. Not sure if he meant out patient, I called my father to beg for the money instead of returning to the hospital.

The pharmacy only had four of the pills on hand and had to order the rest to fill the prescription. I paid for those in full without the help of insurance coverage and managed to avoid the hospital for the weekend.

On Monday, arriving at the infectious disease doctors office, the doctor who treated me in the hospital was out, so I saw his partner. Telling this doctor my dilemma with the antibiotics, he took a look at the first prescription the emergency room doctor had written me. He said since the infection had been opened up and drained there was no reason the pills I already had filled shouldn't work.

It was two weeks before I was back to 'normal'. The scars have faded but still hurt occasionally. On my last visit to the infectious disease doctor, the one from the hospital, who never mentioned the high priced pills to me again. I asked him why he thought I got infected with MRSA. Thinking he might have some advice for the future. With all the wisdom printed on the diplomas lining his wall he stated, "You were just unlucky, I guess."