Rich is now installed on the couch. Still gaunt, grey, hunched over and very tired – and a literal shadow of his former hay-bale-swinging self – but home. He’s always been terrifically tough, a farmer who thrives on being outside in any weather.
Just as well, because any lesser man probably would have just given up and died after what he’s been through. But he didn’t. He survived. His 25-cm- (10-inch-) long abdominal incision was covered with a long, long bandage right down his mid-line, which we were instructed not to remove for a week.
On his third day home, the bandage looked so grim – sort of wet and soggy – that Rich and I thought it needed to be replaced. We clearly weren’t going to be able to wait for an entire week.
One of the many wonderful things about the UK is that the NHS has what they call district nurses, who actually make house calls and care for you in your home. To an American like myself, this is amazing!
So we contacted the district nurse and explained the situation. She came out to the farm, washed her hands, and spread out the field pack with clean surgical dressings. I stood by and watched, gripping the arm of the sofa, in case I felt wobbly. It seemed like a very long moment, as the nurse carefully peeled the bandage away.
What I saw horrified me. Rich couldn’t look down and see his own incision very well, and he was looking at my face – so I tried to keep my expression calm and blank. But I wanted to scream. I bit my tongue firmly, so I wouldn’t make a noise.
Instead of a neatly healing wound, there were red holes in the incision, gaping like little red wet mouths.
Silently, the nurse swabbed the wound, and put the swab into a packet to send away for testing. She put iodine patches over the worst of the red holes and taped a clean new bandage down the length of Rich’s torso. I made her a cup of coffee, and we talked about inconsequential things. None of us mentioned what we’d just seen.
A different district nurse came to the house the next day, to re-dress the wound. There wasn’t any change – although the little red mouths seemed a little deeper. By the next day, the results of the test had come back. It was the worst possible news – MRSA. Rich’s abdominal incision was infected with an antibiotic-resistant superbug.
I remember hearing the nurse say the words, and feeling that my knees might give way. Everything tilted a bit, and my vision went grainy. And then I put my hand down on the arm of the couch, to steady myself, and tried to concentrate on the rest of what she was saying.
Reading headlines in the newspaper about the existence of bacteria that cannot be treated with antibiotics is one thing. Hearing that someone you love has that type of infection is something different.
I thought, stupidly, ‘This can’t be happening.’ And then I started asking questions. What did it mean, exactly? And what could we do about it?
What it meant, apparently, was that Rich’s wound had been colonized with MRSA bacteria, also known as ‘flesh-eating’ bacteria. So, instead of the wound healing, the bacteria were literally eating new holes in the wound, which were growing deeper by the day.
What could we do? Very little. All of the creams and injections available were based on antibiotics – and MRSA is resistant to antibiotics.
In the Western world, our misuse – and overuse – of antibiotics means that we’ve now succeeded in killing off the weaker strains of bacteria, leaving the more virulent ones to breed and become resistant to our medicines. And out of that chemical stew, which we created, has arisen a new monster – a bacterial strain that we no longer have the tools to fight. It has out-evolved us, outsmarted our best scientists.
We’ve created a nightmare superbug, one that was, at that very moment, sitting in my lounge, on my sofa, infesting my husband. And there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. We were weapon-less, defenceless. Without antibiotics, the doctors have nothing to offer.
The district nurse continued to come every day, to pull the long bandage off, measure the little holes in the wound with a tiny ruler that was included in the field pack they distribute for this purpose, and re-pack the wound with sterilized seaweed.
The purpose of the seaweed was to keep the wound open, so that it would heal up from the bottom. The last thing you want in a situation like this is for the wound to heal over the top, with the infection trapped inside.
Rich rose to the occasion, as he always does, joking with the nurse as she made her measurements and poked the seaweed – which looked like tiny spun fibres of insulation material – down into the holes in the wound with a minute sterile probe. She put a fresh bandage over the top – a long one, more than 30cm (1 foot) in length – and taped it down. We were all relieved, I think, when the wound was out of sight.
Each day, she would put a new iodine patch over the worst of the holes, hoping it would dry up the infection. A new gauze dressing, new tape holding it down. Rich’s skin grew red and raw from the place where the tape was pulled off, day after day.
And then we began the waiting. Waiting for what, I wasn’t exactly sure. But what else could we do?
14 March 2013
Rich has still been taking the antibiotics. Even though we know that the MRSA is resistant, it feels wrong to just sit by and do nothing. But they have been making him nauseous, and when he throws up, it wrenches the entire incision open again. The doctor has now recommended that he stop taking them altogether.
Yesterday he came off the antibiotics and only felt nauseous once. I peeled and pounded up one root of fresh ginger, poured boiling water over it, added the juice of half a lemon and some organic demerara sugar and topped it off with soda water. I gave this concoction to Rich to drink. He liked it, and it seemed to settle his stomach. At least he didn’t retch again – celebrate the small victories!
I’m not normally a fan of ‘natural’ remedies – they always seems slightly hippie-style to me, and ineffective. I’m not interested in things that don’t work. I’d much rather just take a pill and get it over with. But this time, I don’t have much choice. And at least making up a natural remedy gives me something to do, and makes me feel useful. We’ll see how we get on today.
The bad news is that Rich was violently ill again last night. I was hoping that it was the antibiotics that had been making him sick to his stomach, but he still seems to feel nauseous without them. I made him another fresh ginger drink – it seems to be the only thing I have to offer… I hate feeling so helpless!
I’ve been thinking and thinking about MRSA and it occurs to me that maybe part of the problem is the aggressive language we’ve been using around this whole infection thing: phrases like, ‘We’re going to beat it’, ‘We’re fighting it’ or ‘We’re going to kill the bad bacteria.’ They’re all violent metaphors.
In money terms that aggression looks like this: I have something to sell. You offer me less than it’s worth. We haggle. I say it’s great; you say it’s rubbish. You’re knocking it down, destroying it in my eyes and yours, trying to make it worth less. We try to buy everything for the lowest possible price. It’s quite nasty, that model, when you think about it.
It’s the opposite of giving a gift, where you offer your very best and don’t count the cost. It’s also the opposite of the way a female goat suckles a kid – she doesn’t give it just a bit of milk – it all flows out! The let-down reflex of nature is all about abundant generosity, not hold-back, where we try to drive each other down.
In medical terms that aggression looks like pointing a medical gun – antibiotics (anti-life, literally!) – at little tiny things we can’t see, and trying to kill as many of them as possible. Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t worked very well. You can kill a lot of them, but the leftover ones that escape (and some will always escape!) mutate and turn into your worst nightmare monster – a resistant superbug.
So maybe, just maybe, we’re thinking about this all wrong. Maybe we don’t need to ‘fight’ this. Maybe fighting is the wrong way to go about it. Maybe we just need to dance it into the light.
I’v
e put the business on hold for the moment. I don’t seem to be able to cope with the everyday demands of filling orders and selling things, when I want to be concentrating all of my energy on Rich.
And if we’re going to find a solution to this, it’s going to have to be outside the box, since there are no workable solutions inside the box. For me to come up with that solution, I’m going to have to completely change the way I’m thinking – not just about Rich, not just about the MRSA, but about everything. About the business, as well.
I have to walk the talk, whatever that means. I’ve got to shift the paradigm completely, inside my head, as well as in the outside world.
I’ve no idea what I’m talking about! I think I may be losing the plot a bit. So do my family, by the way – they’ve insisted that I go and see my GP, because they think I’m cracking up. I’m not depressed exactly – more on an adrenaline high. My GP checked me over and said he thought I was having a normal stress reaction to crisis.
Don’t know about ‘normal’. What is normal, in a situation like this one? It does feel like I’m running on overdrive at the moment. But if overdrive is how this problem will be solved, then so be it!
It just feels like I have to do everything differently. As Einstein said, a problem can’t be solved on the same level it was created. So how to take everything to a different level, where it can be solved? What would that different level look like? How would it work?
Think, think, think! I tell myself.
Well, for one thing, it wouldn’t be aggressive. It would be – I don’t know – like bees. Like the way bees pollinate flowers – they don’t negotiate, pollen grain for pollen grain. Bees and flowers deal in abundance. Because this is the way the natural world works – more pollen, more flowers, more honey, more bees. More for everyone, not less.
It’s the way biology works – the abundance of let-down, not the stinginess of hold-back. Only human beings practise hold-back. And it hasn’t worked very well for us.
What would the generosity of let-down look like, if it was practised out in the business world? Maybe, instead of money, we use a ‘Golden Ticket’ system. Magic, like Willy Wonka.
We ask our customers to do one random good deed – not a big one, just any little thing to make the world a better place. Pay the toll for the person behind you. Give someone a gift they’re not expecting. Chase after the little old lady who left her cash card in the machine, just anything… and then they can post their good deed on our Facebook page. At the end of the week, we pick out one good deed and send the winner a basket of our goodies – milk, kefir, soap and skin cream.
So, for the moment, while the business is on pause, I’m not going to use money. I’m not going to sell things. I’m not going to trade in that aggressive paradigm – not in any way. I’m in the market for magic, miracles and light at the moment. That’s what I need to save Rich – a miracle. So that’s what I want. So you can’t buy our products for cash just at the moment. You can only purchase them for good deeds, information and ideas.
Later… Astonishing results!
Suddenly our Facebook page has become a clearing house for good deeds, well-wishers and creative ideas about alternative therapies. I love logging onto it. I feel absolutely embraced by people I’ve never met – people who are sending us ideas and remedies, giving us the benefit of their wisdom and research.
One of our first Golden Ticket winners sent me a great article about the effects of blue light on MRSA, with science that shows that it works. I’ve ordered my blue light home-use gizmo, and am now waiting with bated breath for it to arrive. We’ve been getting so much support from customers and friends, people who have ideas about alternative treatments and ways to heal MRSA. Maybe one of the answers will be the one that works, the one we need?
4 April 2013
Good news. We definitely seem to be winning the battle of the incision – it’s drying up and beginning to heal properly. The nurse is pleased and considering cutting back her visits to every other day.
7 April 2013
Rich’s incision continues to heal well – it’s dry and closing nicely. I put a Manuka honey-infused dressing on the wound when we re-dressed it after his bath. But he’s still so tired, and pale, and weak… and still feeling very nauseous morning and night. How best to support his system now? Does he still have MRSA in his body, even though the wound is healing nicely?
My guess is that he does – even though we can’t really know for sure, because the only way to test is to swab the wound and it’s now so healed that there’s nothing to swab. But he just still doesn’t seem right to me. And it seems too much to expect that such a potent bacteria would be completely gone from his system.
Even though he’s still so weak, Rich wanted to go shopping for a new bed. It’s a strange time because he spends most of the day on the couch, but he can get up from time to time. I was worried that the trip would be too much for him – we’ve only been out once since he came out of hospital, to have lunch with some old friends – but he insisted, and so we set out. We went straight into the shop, bought the bed and came straight home again, but the effort still exhausted him hugely, and he’s still tired today.
One of our customers sent me an article about a powerful combination of essential oils that was used during the Middle Ages. It’s been shown in modern studies to kill viruses and bacteria, including MRSA and E. coli. I want to do some research… why are essential oils bio-active against viruses, when most of conventional medicine isn’t? What combination would work? Can I make it here on my kitchen table, and if I do, will it work on Rich?
Rich wants to stick to the goat’s milk kefir, which we make ourselves and sell, and the anti-inflammatory herb mix that I was giving him before the surgery. It’s a combination of herbs recommended to me by a medical herbalist friend who came to stay with us and help on the farm. I brew it up in a big saucepan, with some Manuka honey in it.
Cooled, he can sip on it and it worked really well when his joints were achy and painful before the surgery. He seems better, the wound looks better, but I don’t know, it still just doesn’t seem right.
10 April 2013
Today is our third wedding anniversary. And for the first time in weeks, Rich seems better. This morning, as I was milking the goats, I was startled to see a face pop into the milking parlour – it was Rich! It just goes to show what a long time it’s been since he was outside – and he used to live outside. Never happier than when he was on his tractor, mowing the hay.
These days he’s looking a bit more like an apostle – pale and thinned-down – than a pirate, which is how he used to look! But it was still lovely to see him outdoors.
He’s been able to do a few projects around the place as well – he got the water and sewerage connected to our lovely caravan (which we call the Treehouse because when you’re in it all you can see is treetops), so he actually did a lot of work. Still feeling a bit nauseous, but the incision has healed so well that it scarcely needs a bandage.
I received the ingredients for my magic essential oil mix today. In the post. Isn’t it funny that the only things that seem to work against viruses are natural? Manuka honey, and this combo of essential oils – could it possibly work for us? Can’t wait to try it!
Rich prefers a shower to a bath – he’s too tall to fit comfortably into our little bathtub – so I think I’ll blend up my own combination of the oils and give him a footbath with it in front of the telly. At least it smells nice – and it can’t hurt, let’s face it. He’ll hate it – he loathes being fussed over! But I’m going to insist anyway. I have hope that these essential oils will drive the MRSA away for good.
24 April 2013
Rich was better – so much better. The incision was clean, and dry, and looked almost completely healed – just like a scar, really. But then we went into the hospital for a check-up. The surgeon opened the wound and looked at it, and then dressed it again without the honey, in just a brief bandage with no waterproo
fing. The next day there were two bright red patches – and the day after that they’d burst open again. Re-infected with MRSA! I can’t believe it.
He’s so much worse now. I was furious with the nurses, who refused to put the Manuka honey dressing on the wound – why, why, when there’s so much research indicating that medical honey works on MRSA? That it keeps the bacteria from becoming resistant to antibiotics?
We’d bought and paid for our own surgical bandages infused with sterile Manuka honey, and even brought with us an article from the NHS website – which I’d printed and actually laminated – all about the benefits of medical honey. And still the nurses refused to use the bandages, because they’re ‘not on the protocol list’. One nurse told me they’re not on the list because they’re too expensive. Yet even when I buy my own, they won’t use them.
So, now we’re back to square one – a new and frightening gaping hole in the wound, growing ever deeper and closer to Rich’s vital organs. This time the wound has to be packed and dressed three times a day. The nurse can only come once a day, so that leaves the other two times to me. I never trained as a nurse, but it doesn’t seem to matter – I’ve figured out by now that you can do whatever you have to.
Rich sits on the sofa, and I wash my hands and then spread out everything we need on the table by the fire. The field packs they’ve given us have everything in them – a rubber apron, rubber gloves, clean gauze, washes, wipes. We have packs of the seaweed and the probe that the nurse used. There’s even a little trash bag included.
I look into Rich’s eyes, and smile. He smiles back at me. Even now, he jokes to keep my spirits up. It breaks my heart. He sets his teeth, nods at me and I pull the long, long bandage off. He winces as the tape tears at his ravaged skin. The holes are deeper, I’m sure of it. Today I’ll call the NHS and ask about medical maggots – maybe they will help.
Secrets from Chuckling Goat Page 19