Ten days ago, Redondo Beach District 2 Councilman Bill Brand developed a swollen, red spot on the front of his leg. Had he treated it as if it were a simple spider-bite, he may very well have lost his leg. Or worse.
As he later learned, Brand had contracted Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph infection that, according to experts, has become the most prevalent form of staph in the United States.
As Brand tells it, he’s still not quite narrowed down exactly where he contracted the infection.
“We never actually figured it out, but I had been surfing four days in a row before I got it,” Brand said. “That’s what my doctor suspects — he says it’s in the ocean, it’s on the beach, it’s everywhere.”
Last Sunday night, April 5, Brand saw a raised red spot on the front of his leg. “It was a swollen red bump, and it got really painful. Then the rest of my leg started to swell,” he said. That night, he went to Torrance Memorial Hospital, where he said “they poked around and couldn’t really tell exactly what it was, other than it was turning into cellulitis.” Brand was then told to come back if it got worse.
Then, he says, “it exploded into a full blown infection in the rest of my leg,” and by midnight, Brand was back at Torrance Memorial.
As of this writing, on April 13, Brand said he expects to be out of the hospital by day’s end, having finally been given an antibiotic treatment that’s proven effective against his infection. He expects to continue the course of intravenous antibiotics for at least a week following his discharge, courtesy of a PICC line, a catheter that runs up the arm and into the heart.
“MRSA is very prevalent all over the United States, not just the South Bay,” said Dr. Loren G. Miller, an infectious disease specialist with LA BioMed. Previously a strain of staph rarely seen outside of hospitals, MRSA became more common about 12 years ago, according to Miller.
“A lot of providers still haven’t completely caught onto that being the case, but at this point in time it’s pretty much the predominant strain in the US,” he said.
Most commonly, as with Brand, it presents itself as a boil or an abscess, and is usually mistaken for a spider bite. “Because of that, some people tend to not seek medical care, figuring it’s going to go away,” Miller said. “The thing is, while some spiders can cause things that look like those boils, those spiders don’t live in Southern California.”
Brand has been documenting his stay at Torrance Memorial since his admission, posting photos with visitors such as Congresswoman Janice Hahn and District 3 City Council candidate Candace Nafissi, and offering his opinions on the challenges facing the city despite being posted in a hospital bed.
“The doctor said that ‘it’s great you came in and didn’t try to tough it out,’” Brand said. “People die from it. Everyone wants a moral to the story, but if you get a bad infection, just go to the doctor.” ER
