Drug-resistant staph infection handicaps Copperopolis teen
Published: September 30, 2008
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Seventeen-year-old Bryce Burton, of Copperopolis (left), sits in his living room with his sister, Lindsey, father, Dan, and his mother, Stephanie.
MAGGIE BECK/UNION DEMOCRAT
By SEAN JANSSEN
The Union Democrat
During a July shopping trip, Bryce Burton lost the use of his legs.
"My muscles just didn't work anymore," said the Copperopolis boy, who turned 17 Tuesday.
He thought his legs were asleep while on the shopping trip in Sonora. But they refused to "wake up."
Later in the day, he was on a medical helicopter flight from Sonora Regional Medical Center to Children's Hospital and Research Center Oakland. His life was on the line.
"One day, our life flipped totally upside-down," said Bryce's mother, Stephanie. "We didn't know if he was going to live or die."
The source of Bryce's paralysis, which may have reached his lungs had it not been for quick-thinking medical personnel, was a staph infection: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a strain of bacteria that is resistant to most antibiotics. It infects more than 94,000 Americans annually and kills almost 19,000, according to a 2007 American Medical Association study, making it a more prevalent cause of death than AIDS in the U.S.
Bryce's MRSA infection had attached to his spine, and surgery to combat the rapidly attacking germ involved removing two vertebrae from his back, cleaning them and screwing them back in. After surgery, Bryce could no longer walk. He is now wheelchair-bound and has been told by doctors it may be permanent.
The first signs of anything wrong with Bryce seemed innocent enough. A year earlier, he had gotten carbuncles, small red bumps that resembled insect bites, boils or pimples.
Other neighborhood children had the same thing, his father, Dan, said.
Doctors chalked the problem up to aggressive insects.
"Parents were tearing their houses apart looking for assassin bugs," Dan added.
None were to be found. The true culprit is easily transmissible and spreads quickly, occurring often in schools, prisons, gym locker rooms and similar social environments.
"Staph is everywhere," Dan said.
Sonora High wrestling coach Jon Abernathy agrees, adding "all bacteria are everywhere."
The high-contact sport of wrestling has a reputation for spreading MRSA, but Abernathy said it's just one thing to watch out for, in addition to ringworm and skin diseases.
"We mop the mats daily with a special solution," he said, adding that coaches and officials inspect athletes before practices and meets, and use a foam spray to combat skin lesions.
Abernathy said he knows of at least two cases of MRSA in the past two years among his athletes, and one boy was hospitalized with a suspected case.
"It looks like a whole bunch of other things," he said of the tricky infection. "If you don't catch it early, it can be a real problem."
While it is not certain how Bryce contracted MRSA, he certainly would have been better off catching it earlier. Without knowing he should have been taking antibiotics before getting his wisdom teeth pulled, Bryce had the dental work done. He and his family later learned from staff at Children's that such a procedure can cause MRSA to flare up.
Today, Bryce's life is much-changed. He spent six weeks at Children's Hospital, returning home Sept. 12. He would have been a junior at Bret Harte High School this fall but intensive physical therapy takes top priority and he is now homeschooled and often travels to Modesto for treatment. An avid hiker and fisherman before his MRSA ordeal, Bryce is awaiting a chance to fish again at an upcoming benefit event for him at Lake Tulloch Resort and hopes to soon have a wheelchair with more rugged tires that can be better maneuvered outdoors.
He has taken his medical problems in stride and shrugs off the idea that any of it might be too difficult.
"I can handle it," Bryce said.
Friends visit for Nintendo Wii tournaments at his home and his parents are working to get him a drum kit that suits his wheelchair. The Burtons have done a lot of home remodeling to make doorways easier to pass through and a more accessible bathroom.
"We want to make his life as simple as we can for him," Stephanie said.
His parents also want others to learn from Bryce's MRSA case.
What looks like a bug bite is not one necessarily, and can be much more serious.
"They say not to treat it as if it's a bug bite," Dan advised. "So don't."
Contact Sean Janssen at sjanssen @uniondemocrat.com or 736-8097.
I have known this kid for years because his dad used to give me guitar lessons and his sister grew up with my brother.
staph is one of those aliments that is just evil.
it makes you mad that it exists.
Poor kid.
woah
D A M N
Anybody else get freaked out anytime they get an ingrown hair or any slightest red bump anymore?
^ yes :/
ttt
Why is it so prevalent in MMA and BJJ? I've played sports all my life and never heard of it before
Maldini2706 - Why is it so prevalent in MMA and BJJ? I've played sports all my life and never heard of it before
Its starting to pop up in other sports. Co-worker of mine has a 12 yr old son who almost died from MRSA and he played basketball.
You forgot wrestling. Not so sure there is alot of it at strictly Gi BJJ.
From what I have read its several things.
1. Unclean mats ...have to be religious about cleaning mats after every class.
2. People wearing street shoes or dirty wrestling shoes onto the mats.
3. Skin to skin and skin to mat contact... Maybe wear long sleeve rashguard if your no-gi.
This dude likely go it from a cat shelter:
Tucson Region
Feb. death of Tucson man, 39, tied to staph
By Stephanie Innes
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.27.2008
An aggressive pneumonia caused by a common organism is being blamed for killing a 39-year-old Tucson man who died after waiting eight hours in a local emergency room while his wife says she pleaded for help.
A U.S. Centers for Disease Control report says Robert Sweitzer died Feb. 10 at St. Mary's Hospital of "necrotizing pneumonia" caused by a common bacterium, staphylococcus aureus. Generally, staph is an organism that can be successfully treated with antibiotics.
"This is pretty uncommon, to see a young, healthy person die within a relatively short amount of time from a fairly common organism," Pima County Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce Parks said Tuesday.
Parks said it appears Sweitzer died of a particularly virulent form of staph called methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
MRSA, often called a "superbug," is growing in prevalence across the country and does not respond to penicillins and cephalosporins, the class of drugs normally used to treat staph infections. However, it can be treated with specialized, "second-line" antibiotics.
"It seems logical that it's MRSA, but I can't say without a doubt," Parks said.
In the CDC analysis, tissue from Sweitzer's lungs tested negative for hantavirus, a potentially fatal respiratory disease, which Parks said was one possibility considered in the unusual death.
Parks' office, along with the Arizona Department of Health Services, had sent tissue samples to the CDC for further examination because of the concern hantavirus might be involved.
Also, two organisms were grown from the lung culture during the autopsy at the Pima County Forensic Science Center, either one of which could have caused the infection. Those organisms were klebsiella and MRSA. Health officials wanted to know which of those organisms, if either, was most likely the cause, Parks said.
Since the CDC's findings were consistent with a staph infection, Parks said he believes the death was probably related to MRSA.
Sweitzer's widow, Rachel, confirmed Monday that she'd seen the autopsy report but declined comment other than to say she remains devastated by the loss of her husband.
Until hours before he visited the emergency room at St. Mary's Hospital on Saturday, Feb. 9, Robert Sweitzer had been a healthy man who worked full time, worked out regularly and was active in the animal-welfare community.
Though he'd felt he was coming down with a cold, Sweitzer volunteered at a local cat shelter all morning that Saturday. By afternoon he was feeling worse, coughing and losing energy. He was also suffering intense pain in his lower back.
When he started breathing hard, the Sweitzers went to St. Mary's ER at 6:30 p.m., his wife has said. It was packed, during the start of Tucson's severe flu outbreak.
At 7 p.m. he was called for triage, a preliminary assessment of the severity of his symptoms. His vital signs were stable. He was assessed as needing a low level of care, hospital officials have said.
Rachel Sweitzer has said his condition was never reassessed in the next eight hours, despite her pleas for help as she said his pain became unbearable and his breathing grew more strained.
That day, some 170 patients flooded St. Mary's ER, creating a bottleneck and resulting in waits well beyond eight hours for many patients. Hospital officials called in more staff and opened additional inpatient beds to try to handle the onslaught.
After 2:30 a.m., when Sweitzer was called to see an emergency physician, X-rays showed severe pneumonia — his lungs filled with fluid, by his wife's account. Barely able to breathe, he was placed on full oxygen. Morphine did not control his pain.
His heart stopped twice. They resuscitated him once, but it failed a second time, and they tried unsuccessfully to intubate him.
He was pronounced dead about 7 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 10.
A spokeswoman for St. Mary's Hospital would not comment Tuesday.
Though he could not comment on Sweitzer's case, local infectious-disease expert Dr. Sean Elliott said about 5 percent of MRSA infections are invasive — not skin-based — and therefore more difficult to detect.
When MRSA enters the bloodstream it's like having chemical poisoning, he said.
"It may be a very, very subtle entry into the skin and it gets into the bloodstream," said Elliott, an associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Arizona and the medical director of infection prevention at University Medical Center. "Once it's past the skin barrier, it can be quite a problem."
Those MRSA infections can result in such illnesses as pneumonia, bone infection, and endocarditis, he said. The sufferer may at first appear to have the flu but will get increasingly sick and eventually have chest pain and difficulty breathing.
"It can be very fast," he said. "Rapid death with MRSA is reported."
He added that such cases are extremely rare, and if caught early enough can be treated with special antibiotics.
? Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at 573-4134 or at sinnes@azstarnet.com.
shit this is scary, i was getting alot of red bumps on my forearms and only 1 or 2 on my thighs.
But i was putting on Ken shield before every class, i dont think we mop are mats after every class. =( sucks.
Since ive been out with a bad knee the red spots are gone.
I shudder to think back on how dirty our mat were back in the 70s. We never washed them, just rolled them up. After practice the bottoms of our feet would be black and there'd be a deposit - which was probably dead skin from last month, (ewww).
I guess back then the resistant strains of bacteria were not prevalent. We got lucky no one got any infections or fungus.