About a week ago on Friday evening Nik complained that her chest hurt and she had a small red spot on her left side. Not thinking much of it, we went to bed. On Saturday morning she slept really late and when I woke her she said her left side hurt really bad. I looked and the red spot had swollen up and spread over her entire upper left chest. I started looking up the symptoms and figured out she had cellulitis, but this was really vague and didn't explain why it was spreading so fast. She had really bad fevers and kept sleeping. Her friend from Michigan was coming in later that night and I said she needed to find a quick care but she refused. After debating the cost of an ER visit and whether it was necessary, she said if it got any worse she would go in later that night. We agreed and she fell back asleep.
Two hours later (at 2pm) I woke her up again and she was drenched in sweat and breaking another high fever. We looked at her chest and the infection had spread another two inches and was increasingly swollen and there was a large lump under her skin. She was complaining of her heart feeling strange. Being that the infection was located directly over her heart she finally agreed to go to the hospital.
Once in the ER (after a long delusional 2 blocks trying to get her there) they put her in isolation. The nurse said she had MRSA (a staph infection resistant to certain antibiotics). They gave her a last resort type of antibiotic that causes adverse reactions in most everyone. Once they started it, about a quarter of the way through Nik started itching really badly and we buzzed the nurse who shut off the IV and gave her about 5 vials of Benadryl and waited for the allergic reaction to calm down before starting the antibiotic again. After about 2 or 3 hours of antibiotics (and a prescription for 2 more), we were told we could leave as long as we came back if it didn't start going away. As Nik was standing up she got really dizzy and the nurse took her pulse and blood pressure, which had sky-rocketed. After waiting another 30 minutes of them monitoring her blood pressure, she was finally discharged (still feverish and in pain). The pain she felt wasn't like a little ache, it was extremely painful to even have the bed sheet over her skin.
She is doing much better now and the infection has almost entirely gone away, but the nurse said she was lucky she came in when she did considering how fast it was spreading. Now I'm seeing MRSA in the news everywhere. Apparently it is really common with IV drug users. I think the intake nurse might have thought she used IV drugs, but she was really nice regardless of whatever was going through her head.
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