The Paper Cut - A Cautionary Tale

I don't know if this is the right Forum for this information, but maybe it is. I think the main point of this story is that when it comes to infections we seem to be at the cross roads of a different world than what most of us have known. Like me you probably know that so called super bugs, antibiotic resistant germs, have been quietly emerging. If you are like me, you have never really encountered such a germ or seen its handy work...until now.

My sister who is relatively young, healthy, and athletic got a simple paper cut one day at work. It didn't even bleed. It didn't hurt. Just as she had done so many times before, she thought nothing of it. A week later, the end of her finger was swollen and had begun to turn black, a scary, solid black black, a very dark and solid black unlike anything I had ever seen before. That was just the beginning.

For three weeks she took a variety of antibiotics, sometimes as many as 4 different ones at a time, but the finger got worse and the blackness began to make its way down the finger. Then for a week she went to the dr every day to have the finger lanced. The nail was removed. Finally, she was hospitalized. She stayed in the hospital for 2wks - for a paper cut. While she was there the drs asked her to consider having the finger amputated since the infection had still shown no sign of stopping. They told her they had another woman in ICU who had already expired 2x and very well might not make, and all over a small cut. They were afraid my sister would get sepsis, afraid the infection would spread to the bone, afraid they would soon be asking to remove the hand and then...

My sister resisted the amputation and was lucky. She rolled the dice and won this time. She was released from the hospital with all her digits. The finger still looks positively horrible, but it is looking better than before. It has now been more than a month since the initial paper cut. She is still on strong antibiotics and heavy pain meds. She is still unable to go back to work.

I guess the point of telling you this is to sound a warning bell. All of my life and probably yours, drs have been able to stop almost anything in its tracks quickly with antibiotics. As a result, I've learned not to take minor cuts and scrapes very seriously. I haven't used a bandaid in ages. I don't put medication on cuts and scrapes. I'm lucky if I bother to wash them - other than the usual daily bath that is. I think nothing of putting a cut hand in dish water and heaven knows what else. I've been lucky. Perhaps you have, too. But a new day is dawning. I'm going to take a little better care of those minor cuts and scrapes from now on. It may be that this could not have been prevented, but I'm going to be a little more careful, just in case.