Weird wounds

By Diane Prokop
Times Staff Writer

The summer of 2007 was no vacation for the Cummings family.
The patriarch of the family, Mayfair Civic Association president Scott Cummings, calls it the summer of MRSA hell.
Cummings’ son Cody, 13, was the first of the family to be affected by the infection. Before the summer was out, wife Vicki, son John Scott, 4, and daughter Lindsay, 15, all had run-ins with the painful bacteria.
MRSA stands for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. It’s a bacteria that is present in the noses, throats and skin of healthy people without causing infection. However, if it’s inhaled into the lungs or under the skin through a cut, it can cause infections that present themselves as boils, pimples, spider bites, even shortness of breath, fever and chills in some cases.
While most people may know it as something seen almost exclusively in hospitals, Community Acquired-(CA)MRSA is becoming more and more prevalent. Dubbed the "super bug" due to its resistance to common antibiotics, it can be fatal if left untreated, as it was for 2000 Father Judge grad Ricky Lannetti.
In 2003, Lannetti, who led Lycoming College’s football team with 955 yards in his senior year, died the night before he was to play in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division III playoffs. No one knew the blind pimple he complained to friends about would wind up killing him.
Vicki Cummings had heard about the neighborhood football player’s death from MRSA and knew that her friend’s son has been dealing with it for years.
That, she said, is what prompted her to bring son Cody to the emergency room down the shore.
On June 27, what they thought was a spider bite on his elbow, after three or four days had swollen so much that it was extremely painful for the boy, who had a slight fever.
Cody’s sore was drained and cultured and the 13-year-old was put on bacterim, one of the few antibiotics effective for MRSA infections.
Vicki Cummings would apply warm compresses, drain it until it would begin to bleed and then keep it covered. Today a small purple scar is all that remains.
On July 7 they noticed what again they thought was a bug bite — after all, down the shore you get bit by green flies and mosquitoes — on the back of John Scott’s neck. It quickly became red and inflamed.
"They had to sedate him and lance it," Vicki Cummings said.
The 4-year-old had an IV in his hand and had to have a wick (a strip of material used for drainage) shoved into the wound — tough for any parent to take.
The family thought they were through with the insidious bug, but a month later Vicki Cummings went to the urgent care center near their home in Somers Point with three extremely painful sores on her upper leg. The pain was much worse than childbirth.
"It was constant, constant. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t drive," she said.
Vicki Cummings’ case was so severe that physicians had to lance the affected sites twice and she had to receive Vancomycin intravenously. At one time, Vancomycin was considered the drug of last resort.
Luckily, her mother was able to care for her, changing her dressings several times a day. The family was also lucky when daughter Lindsay discovered what looked like a blind pimple on her upper leg. She was treated right away and didn’t have to experience the pain her mom and siblings had to endure. The family surmised she may have gotten it from sharing a razor with her mom.
The Cummings’ experience with MRSA prompted them to urge neighbor Tommy Lafferty, who had a similar-looking skin infection, to get to the doctor ASAP. Sure enough, the 15-year-old Mayfair youth had MRSA.
While Tommy has one small scar from his first sore, a more recent wound is far from healed, although he had just pulled the core (pus) from its center earlier that day.
Recurrence is not uncommon. For some, infection can linger for years.
That’s why you’ll find a bottle of hand sanitizer on a table by the front door of the Cummings home in Mayfair home.
The family’s bathrooms are scrubbed down with bleach and Vicki Cummings finds herself doing a lot more laundry.
After this past summer, the civic president is on a mission to make the community aware of this infection. Cummings contacted City Councilman Jack Kelly (R-at-large), who announced last week that he’d move to declare September as MRSA Awareness Month when Council resumes session on Sept. 20.
Kelly is also aiming to make the city’s public and parochial schools report MRSA per incident and not per outbreak, as is current protocol.
Cummings believes that while Cody’s MRSA reared its atrocious head down the shore, he probably contracted it in Mayfair the week before.
If schools notified parents with each incident of the infection, families could be on the lookout and prevent not only painful summers but save lives as well, he said. ••
Ricky Lannetti’s mother, Theresa Drew, has created a Web site that has more information about MRSA. Go to www.mrsaawareness.com
Reporter Diane Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dprokop@phillynews.com