Antibiotic drug resistance has become a huge issue, so much so that world leaders passed a declaration aimed at slowing the spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, calling it “historical” and “a turning point.”And while most of us have heard about these so-called superbugs, not everyone is aware of how quickly it can take away a life. That’s why Everly Macario is telling her story about her son’s life being taken by an antibiotic resistant strain of MRSA.
Macario’s healthy 1-year-old, Simon Sparrow, went from having a routine strep infection to dying within just 24 hours after developing an antibiotic resistant strain of MRSA.
“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare,” Macario says of the 2004 incident. [1]
Young Simon was up-to-date on all of his vaccines and had no underlying health issues, which is what partially stunned his parents. The boy was recovering from strep throat, which made it hard for him to breathe. But his parents, Jim Sparrow and Macario, began to become worried when Simon still wasn’t acting himself after a couple of days.
As a precautionary measure, they took him to their local emergency room, but they were told to go home, even though Simon’s father remarked that his son’s lips had taken on a bluish hue.
But their son wasn’t getting any better. Macario says that at one point, she touched her son’s face and it was ice-cold. It was then that she called an ambulance where he was rushed back to the hospital.
She says of the incident:
“When we arrived in the emergency room, suddenly it was an onslaught of medical people that just surrounded Simon, and I’m not really sure how they knew this exactly, but they kept repeating, ‘your son is very, very sick, your son is very, very sick’.” [2]
Read: It’s Here – Bacteria Resistant to ALL Antibiotics Shows up in U.S.
Her son was put on a heart and lung machine, but passed away shortly thereafter. At the time, there was no immediate cause of death, so his parents agreed for an autopsy to be performed. The results stated that little Simon had died from a strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
Because of her son’s death, Macario is now an advocate with the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and hopes to make every parent aware of these unfortunate possible outcomes.
The United Nations and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are now working to create a better approach to curb antibiotic resistance so that stories like Simon’s are not repeated.
Sources:
[1] NBC News
[2] Today