Transcription
One day in Midsummer, she is playing with the fish tank. I had my hand in the fish tank trying to catch the fish, and then I heard my mom coming. My mother doesn't like me playing in the fish tank, so of course I was like, "Oh no, what do I do?"
So then my first reaction was, of course, to pull my hand out, dry it off, and act like nothing happened. I hopped onto the couch and acted like I was asleep. But the next day, Honay notices something strange. I'm taking a shower and like, "Oh, I have a scratch." I was so used to scratches and bruises that it didn't bother me.
Honay keeps the scratch on her hand to herself, but four days later, she notices that it still hasn't healed. The scratch wasn't getting any better. My hand would throb, and it was weird; it didn't feel normal. Of course, I was like, "Oh my goodness, what the heck is wrong with me?" But I figured, you know, maybe something got infected.
The next afternoon, Amy notices her daughter acting oddly. She could tell that I was protecting my hand, and when I looked at it, she saw I had a cut on my knuckle. I just figured it wasn't anything a little peroxide couldn't take care of. Amy dresses Hon's wound. I didn't want it to spread in the gym nor to somebody else in the family. I wasn't about to let a little infection stop me.
Sometimes I would have it covered up; sometimes I just wouldn't care. But two weeks of peroxide treatment proved ineffective. It was purple, big, swollen, and oozy and gross. She'd like get the ooze out, keep cleaning it, and told me to keep it covered. It wasn't getting better, so I called my primary physician and made an appointment.
He examined the wound and agreed that it was infected, so he put her on antibiotics for ten days. Hunay takes antibiotics, but when she finishes the course and examines the cut, she's surprised by the results. It was still oozy and nasty and wasn't right. If you pressed on it, it felt like a burning sensation, and then it would hurt like something was in there. I was concerned about it; it wasn't going away, so I didn't know what to do at that point.
So Amy takes Honay back to the doctor. He thinks that because the wound didn't heal on the antibiotics, he was going to culture it for MRSA. MRSA is an acronym for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph infection that can cause significant tissue damage and is resistant to most antibiotics. In some cases, it's fatal. I didn't know what MRSA was; I didn't know how serious it was. Of course, I was scared. I was like, "Okay, is this going to affect my gymnastics? Am I going to have to, you know, stop?"
Three weeks later, Amy takes Honay back to the doctor's office for the results. The culture came back negative. The antibiotics still weren't working, and he didn't even at that point know what was wrong with it. I was frustrated at being so far into the infection without any improvement, and at that point, it was getting more painful for her.
Struggling to control the infection, Amy lays down some new rules for her daughter. My mom had kept me indoors, so I got used to being inside and doing stuff inside. Well, of course, at that point, I was mad and frustrated. Hunay remains holed up in the house until Amy takes the kids to an end-of-summer poolside vacation.
I was afraid she was going to get another infection from any kind of germs that were in the pool. She made me wear a glove; I had to keep my hand above water when I would swim, and that wasn't fun. That was horrible. I was mad; I was really mad. She was very upset with me, but I thought I was protecting her and everybody else, so I did what I had to do.
Then a week after they get home, while Amy is changing out the bandage, another strange symptom appears. I'd be scratching my eyes, scratching my face, all that stuff. I didn't know her to have allergies, so it was kind of odd for her to be rubbing her eyes as vigorously as she was. She's like, you know, opening my eye, and I was like, "What is your problem, lady? What are you doing to my eyes?"
She didn't understand that I was trying to help her; she just thought I was being mean. All around her iris and the whole white of the eye had bumps on it. I'm like freaking out. I was like, "Dude, why do I have bumps on my eyeballs? That's not normal."
We have this unknown thing on her hand and now this unknown thing with her eyes, but not until I saw her a day or two later actually rubbing her eye with that hand did I connect the two. That's when I panicked and thought, "Oh no, no!" I couldn't get to the doctor fast enough.
Her doctor confirmed that it is, in fact, possible to rub the infection into the eyes. According to her doctor, the infection could make Honay blind. The thought of her going blind didn't cross my mind. I was kind of scared; that would be a big tragedy to lose my eyesight at that young age.
Trying to combat her creeping affliction, the doctor also prescribes antibiotic eye drops. On their drive home, Amy drops by her workplace, where her boss, Dr. Jeffrey Ratat, runs a dermatology clinic. Amy worked for me for several years as a transcriptionist, and she had asked me if I would be willing to look at her daughter's hand.
He was kind of looking at it and squeezing, you know, seeing my reaction with pain. She was definitely crying; she was in a lot of pain. She had a very tender nodule on the top of her hand, and there were a few smaller little satellite lesions around the edges of that.
When the labs come back, he has an unusual diagnosis. We finally got the results back, and it did confirm my suspicion that this was a Mycobacterial marinum infection. I really panicked. I've never even heard of Mycobacterium marinum. At that point, I was like, "Whoa, man, that's a big word! What does that mean?"
I mean, I'm not, you know, an adult; I'm not a walking dictionary. Mycobacterium marinum can be highly resistant to antimicrobial drugs. Mycobacterium thrives in a slightly cooler environment; because of that, it typically infects the muscle tissues of the feet and hands, which tend to be a little cooler than the rest of the body.
To head off this infection, white blood cells engulf the bacteria, but the resilient Mycobacterium withstands being eradicated and kills the white blood cells from inside out. The bacteria continue to spread across Hon's muscle tissue, slowly but surely creeping their way to the bone.
I could just tell by the look on her face that she was scared. In a third of reported cases, the bacterial infection extends deep into the tissue and can often lead to irreversible damage. Delays in diagnosing Mycobacterium can reach the brain; the infection can be fatal.
Are you kidding me? My dream was to go to the Olympics, so I was, you know, freaking out. I wasn't going to accept that there was nothing they could do. Just as disturbing is how Honay contracted this deadly bacteria. Mycobacterium marinum is a bacterium that usually infects fish.
It's thought that all species of fish are susceptible to Mycobacterium, but humans are also vulnerable to infection and typically contract the bacterium through an open wound. Dr. Rat thinks he knows where Honay could have gotten the infection: the family fish tank.
I remembered specifically catching her several times putting her hand in the fish tank and trying to catch the fish. I had made it clear that she wasn't supposed to be doing that. Fortunately, her course of antibiotic eye drops rapidly clears the infection in her eyes, removing any threat to her brain.