Cellulitis and MRSA infection, this stuff is bad: Thoughts?

I’m also having issues with cellulitis and extreme itching on both lower legs. I have taken 2 different antibiotics st the same time for 6 weeks with poor results. Tomorrow I will see an infectious disease Dr and this has been a long nightmare for me . I’m drained from all the ongoing infections and constant itching.

Speaking to Laura (rich81)'s situation in the opening comments of this thread, I regrettably understand much of what you went through in your struggle to maintain care for your son. I have recurrent cellulitis via MRSA at least once and often twice (sometimes three times) yearly and have had this dreadful experience for over 13 years now. Forgive me now for the length of this post - I will try and refrain in later posts, I'm hoping to punctuate the horrible circumstances that exist for the patient and family when medicine is not open to collaboration or suggestions from colleagues with documented experience. It prolongs treatment, suffering, anguish; to me everything that medicine should not be. My experience began not long after I had surgery to repair a previous repair of an umbilical hernia, the then current repair (2009) being a mesh implant instead of staples used in the previous repair years earlier. A month after the surgery, I developed an infection and one of the surgical sites that tested positive for MRSA, for which a round of Clindamycin was prescribed with symptoms subsiding. Six months later, I developed excessive swelling in my lower left leg, accompanied by localized fever at the site and a broad-scaled run-down, feeling with extreme pain in that same leg, in the lymph nodes on the left side of the remainder of my body, fever up to 104, confusion and headache which would not subside. My doctor was great, but he did not do rounds at the in-network hospital and his suggestions and advice/commentary were not heavily weighted in decisions made by the doctors making rounds at the hospital. To make a long story short, I was given IV Vancomycin for what the hospitalists were calling cellulitis (which I had never heard much about before, except for what my own doctor had told me prior to going to the hospital). There were no cuts, open wounds, scars, lesions, or openings in the skin otherwise found then or at any other time since to suggest how such an infection was born, yet it was always found to be MRSA. There were conflicting ideas at the time about the finding itself of the MRSA infection in lab work, points of entry, reliability of data, etc... Not one of the doctors could agree on what or why there was such an infection or if MRSA was indeed the cause. I was discharged with orders for IV Vancomycin twice daily for fourteen additional days, during which time it appeared to heal. At the end of the IV therapy, I went back to work and within 10 days, it came back. This time it came back quicker, fiercer, stronger, and was not responding to vancomycin. The new hospitalist whose ear I managed to gain was the only thing that saved me then. He listened to me, ordered a new IV med called Linezolid and it got down to business. But it never got rid of the infection. Not long after my first ten bouts with this, my long-time beloved doctor retired and the struggle I took time to describe above increased 10-fold from that point on to the present. Now, 13 years after my first experience with this unknown monster and 7 years after my doctor retired, I know exactly when it is coming on, I let my current doctor know at once expecting the usual cynicism or skepticism, sometimes with no action taken, sometimes with me taking my own action and going to the ER and forcing his hand, and sometimes waiting at home, miserable, for weeks hoping it will go aways with the antibiotics the doctor calls in, even knowing that Linezolid is the only antibiotic that works quickly and effectively. Before my old doctor retired, he did get a referral for me to see doctors at Mayo in Rochester, and I did get to make the trip up there. The prognosis: I will always deal with this, at best, I will do a maintenance-type suppression therapy, taking monthly injections of bicillin, 1.2 to 2.4 million ccs. But today, I have a host of illnesses that may stem from the wear and tear of this virus, I don't know, and I don't know where to look or who to ask for answers. I'll have to save the host of illnesses for another post for time's sake, but over half a dozen ailments I currently have will not be cured and will result in death. I'm 50 years old and my quality of life should not be as poor as what I experience right now. Just 18 months ago, it was not.

Well, I’m 73yrs. First episode came from poison oak while trimming boxwood. I was hospitalized that time. Now it’s 4 months later and happened again. I am medicated again, this time I went to doctor earlier, it was mentioned to no longer garden. First time seemed to be poison oak based. I live in northern Georgia, USA. Has anybody else gone through this?” 😄. I guess it’s not as serious as other folks but it’s sure an annoying disease and I understand it could possibly kill me. My doctor was a teacher of infectious diseases at the teaching hospital I go to. Her husband is now in charge of teaching infectious disease. So I totally trust her. I’d like to back up medical care with untraditional treatment also. Any ideas? Plus; I pray for all who are more seriously affected then I am. Amen, amen I say.