MRSA Comes Home

MRSA officially includes a wide range of Staph infections which resist antibiotics, but symbolizes our Western idiocy with demanding the biggest gun for the most minor discomforts.
Because of antibiotic abuse, which should be classed as malpractice, we now find visiting a hospital frankly dangerous, because MRSA is found there more than anywhere else. I tend to avoid clinical treatment for this very reason. But sometimes the crap finds you at home.
What’s left for us? Home treatments range between natural medicine and “unauthorized” home remedies. I have a recent experience with the latter which might save you money and some misery.
As someone given to sinus allergies, I learned some time ago how to perform a nasal flush. You can purchase over-the-counter kits for this; I use this one but it’s easy to find others which are just as good. You can even create your own. This is fine most of the time, but there are moments when flushing in an upright position won’t do. For those times, I lie on the bed with my head hanging off the end, and pour the solution directly up my nose. This guarantees a good full flush. I typically use an 8 oz. (.25l) squeeze bottle, with hot tap water and ¼ tsp. (1.25ml) of pickling salt (avoid iodized table salt if possible), and a pinch of baking soda to reduce the burning sensation. It requires you learn how to close the opening between your sinuses and your mouth. I give it a 90 second count and repeat at least once. I turn over and drain into a wastebasket, then blow gently to remove the residue.
At some point in the past month, I must have gotten a pretty serious Staph infection from somewhere, because the usual efforts didn’t relieve the constant misery for more than a day or two. It kept coming back, even when the allergen indexes were low. I decided to add something to the salt solution. I skipped the baking soda and added a scant capful of hydrogen peroxide. Granted, this burns mightily after the first flush, but isn’t harmful. The point is, this time it worked. I got a color indication in what I blew out.
But it wasn’t over. About an hour later, I had an itching burning sensation in one ear. It was a small discharge of something other than earwax, and it caused inflammation and infection around the ear opening. About the same time, I noticed similar symptoms in both nostril openings. The usual “triple antibiotic ointment” treatment had no effect on either, as they both grew worse. This was pretty nasty stuff. Nor did the likes of tea tree oil and Campho-Phenique® do any good.
For the ear, I tried a cosmetic puff (AKA “cotton ball”) soaked in hydrogen peroxide, pushed into the opening of the ear. I changed it every couple of hours after it dried. It needed about three days of this, round-the-clock to finally get the itching which indicated it was now attacking my skin, since the infection was gone.
This didn’t work for the nostrils. I actually had to resort to Dakins Solution (PDF). I had to cut the cosmetic puff in half to make it fit comfortably. I could only stand about a half-day of this at a time, and I substituted tea tree oil in the evenings to heal the skin, which was pretty roughed up by the Dakins. But after about three days, the symptoms abated. Yes, it burned harshly, but the dilution was low enough to keep me from worrying about inhaling noxious fumes.
Had I gone to the Veterans clinic, they would have shuffled me off with some series of antibiotics, whatever the government was contracted to purchase this month, serving merely to create yet a new resistance in whatever strain of MRSA this was, plus making me ill in the process.