Recommended, 2024

Editor'S Choice

Woman borrows make-up - now she is sitting in a wheelchair

She borrowed only the make-up. Now she is in a wheelchair.
Photo: Facebook / Jo Gilchrist

MRSA: A pimple put the woman in a wheelchair

She borrowed the make-up from a friend to cover a pimple. Now the 27-year-old woman is in a wheelchair.

Who does not know that? At the most inopportune moment, a pimple opens on the chin. It is just on the road shopping and has left his make-up bag, of course, just home today. Thankfully, the girlfriend has make-up that can be borrowed quickly! For a 27-year-old woman, however, covering a pimple turns out to be a fatal mistake. She had borrowed a make-up brush from a friend on the way. It has an infection, but because staphylococci are so common, they do not think that it can have a negative effect.

A short time later, a few months ago, still very healthy Jo Gilchrist is sitting in a wheelchair. How could that happen? In February, the young woman is taken by ambulance to the emergency room in Brisbane. She complains of extreme pain in the back and legs, which also feel numb.

First, Gilchrist assumes normal back pain. But the young woman has never experienced such terrible pain, not even the birth of her first child is comparable, as she later reports to the Daily Mail. At first the doctors are at a loss in the hospital. Nobody suspects that borrowed make-up could be responsible for its critical condition.

Finally, a MRSA infection is detected. The bacterium, which is resistant to most antibiotics, often settles on the skin of healthy people without rendering them ill. Unless the bacteria enter the body via wounds or mucous membranes. That seems to be the case with the 27-year-old.

The MRSA porter was in her borrowed make-up brush. The doctors immediately give the 27-year-old antibiotics, but the bacterium has already caused incurable damage. The feeling in her legs will never be regained. She will be confined to a wheelchair the rest of her life. But Gilchrist does not take the statement of the doctors just like that. She is fighting and actually learning to walk again. The forces are now sufficient to stand one to two hours a day on the legs.

But now the 27-year-old is even glad that the infection has moved into the spine. Otherwise, the bacterium could also have settled in the brain - which they would not have survived.

Gilchrist just wanted to cover a pimple. Now the young woman is sitting in a wheelchair. Nevertheless, she does not give up. But in the future she will surely only use her own make-up.

Staphylococci are also found in every third healthy person. Usually they are completely harmless. Such extreme consequences as in this case are very rare. For stark consequences have only antibiotic-resistant strands, which are fortunately far less common.

Heavy blows can change our lives. But people like this show us that it's worth fighting.

Posted by Jo Gilchrist on Saturday, March 14, 2015

Popular Categories

Top