Man grateful to be alive after staph infection

Link: Man grateful to be alive after staph infection.

Seligman doesn't have the stamina he used to have before his illness. He has to take medicine for a rapid heartbeat caused by the infection. Otherwise, he is remarkably fit, and grateful to be alive. "I've cut back a bit," he said. "But this is the kind of country where you can cut back, and nobody cares." He puts in about four hours a day as executive director of Step Up, a charity he founded in 1998 that has built health clinics and school libraries, and coordinated an environmental research project with the California Academy of Sciences. Seligman has no idea how he contracted the bug, which is not a known medical problem on Sao Tom�. His illness occurred not long after a visit to an American dentist. Dr. Carolyn Cooper, a San Francisco internist and friend of the family, was first to treat Seligman, and was amazed he survived. "Because he lived in Sao Tom�, we were thinking of all kinds of exotic infections," Cooper recalled. "We took a lot of samples. Everything came back growing MRSA." It is not known whether he contracted the notorious USA300 strain, which by 2004 was endemic in much of the United States. No genetic fingerprints of the bug were taken because such tests aren't necessary for treatment decisions. What mattered to his doctors, and to Seligman, was that an antibiotic was found. It saved his life.

Comments

[Marla]

Reading these stories is so horrifying as well as heart breaking.
Here in Fresno, CA is an operation entailing illegal altering of sewer lines - residents are being exposed to infectious, disease-carrying raw sewage, leaving a trail of illness, infections, death. Yet reporting it resulted in lies, threats and the City of Fresno committing perjury to discredit their own records. We are being annihilated. I don't understand how it can continue.

[Lara]

I contracted MRSA and another nasty staph infection over a year ago. I am still dealing with the effects they wrecked over my body. How long has Seligman been "healthy." I am young and was very energetic and active and now I feel so worn out even after the littlest of the things. Is there hope for regaining that stamina?
Lara