came across this and was a little taken aback. WOW doesn't come close. the Full Story is huge-BMM
By Sherry Jacobson<iframe style="WIDTH: 12px; HEIGHT: 6px" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" src="http://ad.policeone.com/absolutebm/abmw.aspx?z=85&isframe=true" frameborder="0" width="336" scrolling="no" height="280"></iframe>
The Dallas Morning Newsh
Copyright 2007 The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — It started with a nagging pain in Mike Chandler's lower back.
After 10 days of doctor visits and a fistful of prescriptions for painkillers, the 33-year-old Garland firefighter was rushed to Medical Center of McKinney, unable to breathe and showing signs of kidney failure.
It took two more days for a test to confirm that he was fighting a severe infection.
By then, Mr. Chandler was dead.
His death certificate stated simply that he died of multiple organ failure, pneumonia and sepsis, which is the body's response to an overwhelming infection. But the underlying cause of death was what his loved ones could not believe.
An antibiotic-resistant staph infection — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA — killed a strong, healthy firefighter in less than two weeks.
MRSA – often pronounced MER-sa – strikes adults and children, and it sometimes returns after treatment to cause havoc in a carrier's life. But its ability to kill quickly, even before it's diagnosed, is the most frightening part.
Mr. Chandler's survivors knew little or nothing about MRSA, beyond the sudden realization that Americans, who take such pride in their health care system, can be stricken and killed by an infection when they are otherwise healthy.
"He's a guy who climbed a hundred flights of stairs with an 80-pound weight on his back just to keep in shape," said his wife, Karen Chandler. "He was giving his life to help people, to help society."
Major health problem
When Mr. Chandler died so unexpectedly six months ago, MRSA had not yet reached the public spotlight, beyond the occasional death report.
It wasn't until last month that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surprised the nation by announcing that 19,000 Americans were dying from MRSA infections every year, about 2,000 more than die of AIDS.
"Invasive MRSA disease is a major public health problem," concluded a government study in the Oct. 17 Journal of the American Medical Association, which estimated there were 95,000 severe MRSA infections in 2005.
