OK, so I wake up this morning and find a black round mark on my stomach. Surrounded by a red ring. I Google skin cancer - yep it sure looks like the pictures on the web.
Off to the doc. He looks at it and says: You have MRSA. MRSA for those of you (like me) who are uninitiated is
My doc calls my surgeon and they consult and now I must go and have it off a culture taken. And here is a prescription for antibiotics and an antibiotic topical cream. 20 dollars please.
Off to the pharmacy. 60 dollars please.
Off to the surgeon.
Huh? No, that doesn’t look like MRSA. No, no there is nothing in it. It is probably a stray suture from one of your many operations. I’ll take it off and take a culture, there is no infection here. No, don’t use the antibiotic cream. The other antibiotic? Well, it shouldn’t hurt you, so I won’t tell you to stop taking it, but I wouldn’t have prescribed it.
So, no cancer, no MRSA, my wallet is lighter by 80 bucks and I’m feeling like an April Fool.
Something similar happened to my mother-in-law a couple of months ago. At the time, she was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, so they were keeping a close eye on her blood for any sign of illness or infection.
Well, one fine day they say that the lab has found an infection in her blood. The word “septic” is used. It’s some form of staph, they say, and into the hospital she goes for close monitoring and IV antibiotics.
Several days later, they get another report from the lab: sure enough, there’s staph in her blood sample, but it was a kind of staph that only exists on the skin. Translation: her blood sample was contaminated, probably by the nurse when it was drawn. All in all, I suppose that was the best possible outcome following the original diagnosis, but it’s not always easy to see it that way.