They say that a hospital is no place for sick people. When you're sick your resistance tends to be somewhat compromised and consequently you are prone to picking up all sorts of nasty little bugs that are floating around. You can get them from the hands of a nurse that weren't properly washed, a piece of fish that wasn't properly cooked, or by French kissing your new roommate; you know, the one with meningitis (more about that later). One of the souvenirs I picked up at Columbia Presbyterian (not available at the lobby gift shop) is called MRSA, which stands for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. They call it that because it is a staph infection that is resistant to methicillin. Doctors are very logical that way. It is, in my humble opinion, also resistant to any other, more novel means of eradicating it. Like taking a blowtorch to your lungs. What they actually wind up giving you is massive doses of an antibiotic called Vancomycin, also known as The Antibiotic of Last Resort. No kidding; that's what they call it. So naturally, they put me on Vancomycin. It's very expensive and comes with a bonus of lots of fun side effects, not the least of which is ringing in the ears, a.k.a. tinnitus. That's what it gave me (more on that later). Another thing I managed to contract in Columbia Presbyterian was Clostridum Difficile, a.k.a. C-Diff. It is caused by antibiotics that are given to fight the toxic bacteria in your body but also kill the good bacteria that live peacefully in your colon. I wasn't symptomatic until I got to Silver Lake (more on Silver Lake later, too). C-Diff can give you a lot of awful symptoms, but what it gave me was absolutely wicked diarrhea. I won't go into too many details but suffice it to say, it wasn't pretty (right, Surele?). So guess how they treat C-Diff? Vancomycin! Did someone say "ringing in the ears"?
PS There's been a lot of talk in the news lately about superbugs in general and one in particular that is originated in India. If you're interested,
here's a link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67A0YU20100811
is that the yellow stuff?
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