Student’s life altered by staph infection
When Jake Olsen walked into Alpine Orthopedic in mid-September, he had no idea there was a highly contagious infection in his knee. What he did know, he said, was that he had a large lump on his knee.
“It started as a little bump on my knee, kind of like a bug bite, and I started to play with it, and it got really big, really fast,” Olsen said. “It looked like I had another knee on top of my knee.”
Olsen first went to a regular doctor, who told him it looked like he had an infection, gave him antibiotics and sent him home. Two days later when the large lump showed no signs of improvement, Olsen said he was sent to a specialist at Alpine Orthopedic.
At Alpine, Olsen said Dr. Terry Finlayson looked at the lump, poked it once, and told Olsen he was going to cut it open. The worst part though, he said, was the numbing.
“It’s inflamed already, there’s a lot of pressure, so he pokes it in a really tender spot with a needle and pumps a ton more fluid in there,” Olsen said. “I laid back and was trying not to just scream.”
Olsen said what then came out of his knee was gross, but the doctor still didn’t know what had caused it, or what it was. In order to find out, Finlayson swabbed the inside of Olsen’s knee and sent it out. Finlayson then put a piece of gauze soaked in Hydrogen Peroxide in Olsen’s knee, and told him to pull it out two days later.
“We had like 15 people there,” Olsen said. “Some people said they definitely weren’t going to come, and other people said ‘Oh, I have to be there to see it,’ so it was fun.'”
The next day, Olsen found out the infection in his knee was Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, or MRSA.
MRSA is a type of staph infection resistant to most types of antibiotics. According to the Center for Disease Control, when MRSA exists in the community, it is most often in the form of skin infections and generally happen on sections of skin with visible skin trauma, like cuts or scrapes.
Leona Goodsell, the communicable disease nurse at the Bear River Health Department, said one in three people carry staph, although not all carry the MRSA strain. She said the best way to protect yourself is just to wash your hands often.
Olsen said he may have had it and it just didn’t show up for a while, but he is not the first in his family to have MRSA. He said his father had it too.
“I called my dad and told him I have MRSA and he said, ‘Whoa, Jake this is serious. You have to do everything they say and I’m going to tell everybody and we’re going to be praying for you,'” Olsen said. “I knew it was serious before that, because they said they’d have to give me an I.V. to give me medicine, but I’d also need a picc line.”
A picc line is a catheter, or tube, which is placed in a patient’s arm and fed through the veins into the heart. Olsen said he needed the line because his veins would collapse, and since he needed medicine so often, the doctors needed a way for his veins to stay open.
“There’s a 43-centimeter-long tube from my bicep threaded up through my veins to the top of my heart,” Olsen said. “When I found that out I was like, ‘Whoa this is a big deal. Are you kidding me?'”
Olsen said he spent most of that day in the hospital waiting for his picc line to be inserted so he could take his medicine. He said he spends about 5 hours every day preparing for and taking his medicine each day.
Olsen said he wakes up at 5 a.m. every morning to take his medicine out of the fridge and to take Benadryl. The first dose of medicine Olsen received made his skin itch to the point he wanted to rip his skin off, so he takes Benadryl to calm the effect.
An hour later, Olsen is able to take his medicine. The medicine, Vancomiacin, has to be at room temperature to enter Olsen’s blood stream or it hurts.
“It’s in a little bulb, it looks a little like a water balloon or a grenade,” Olsen said. “And I hook it up, and it takes an hour and 45 minutes to get all the way through my bloodstream.”
Twelve hours later, Olsen repeats the process.
Olsen said his life has been altered by having MRSA by the medicine process and the lifestyle change. Olsen recently joined the Air Force ROTC and said he took his medicine with him to physical training one morning.
“Cpt. Cooksey – he’s in charge of the cadets – he saw me and asked me what was going on,” Olsen said. “So I told him I have MRSA, and he got this way serious look on his face, took three steps back and said, ‘You need to go home right now.'”
Olsen said this reaction is somewhat typical when people find out he has MRSA.
“Most people don’t have a clue what it is,” Olsen said. “But I told one guy, and he said, ‘Whoa, don’t people, like, die from that?’ Oh gee, thanks.”
Olsen has a doctors note stating his condition is not contagious so long as he keeps it covered, and that he can still attend school.
When Olsen is at home, he keeps the spot covered as well to protect himself and his roommates. The only time his skin is exposed is when he showers.
“I have to wash down the shower with Clorox when I’m done, and I keep it covered and it’s fine,” Olsen said.
Chris Wilson, junior in English education, is Olsen’s roommate, and has been his friend since the two were 12, Wilson said. Wilson said his life hasn’t really been affected much, aside from having a little more clorox and a nurse in the house.
“It’s interesting, I’ll wake up and walk to the shower and there will be a nurse there,” he said.
Olsen has a nurse come in to take his blood to be sure the medicine is working, but the nurse doesn’t stay with them.
Wilson said it’s getting closer to the time when Olsen will be healing up, but he’s a bit worried about him.
“Jake’s always been one who’s not concerned about his body,” Wilson said. “I mean, he’s never one to hang out at home and just chill. He’s a ‘Let’s do everything extreme, go hiking and camping even when he has a cold’ guy.”
– april.ashland@aggiemail.usu.edu