In the afternoon on Feb. 4, 2009, my son Ethan, age 3, came to me and said he had an ouchie on his hand. It was a red dot with a little swelling. I asked were he had gotten it. He said it was a bug bite. Later that evening were we with some friends at the park. One of the other kids hit Ethan's hand with a plastic sword, he began crying and said it really hurt. Noticing the area was slightly more swollen and obviously sensitive, I had our medical-student friend look it over. He said it was probably just a bug bite and not to worry. The next morning Ethan's hand was quite swollen, it looked like a blown up surgical glove only kid-sized. He asked for water, again and again. In a hour he had gulped down 36 oz of water (it is normally extremely difficult to even get him to sip water). I knew something was wrong. I called poison control, they told me to not worry unless the swelling begins moving up his arm. At noon it had begun moving up toward his elbow. Around 3:00 we went to the pediatrician. After about 10 minutes he decided it could be MRSA and gave us a prescription for a MRSA antibiotic. He left the room and we prepared to leave. Before we left he returned with another doctor who suggested we take a cautious route since it was on his hand. They sent me to the pharmacy and said they would call around to the local hospitals with pediatric units in the area to see if they might have room so we could take Ethan to the ER that night. After a night in the hospital Ethan had an x-ray and then an ultra-sound to see if there was a mass under the swelling. It was easy to spot on the ultra-sound. A few moments later he was in pre-op and taken quickly into a debridment surgery. Still not knowing if it was MRSA or something else, he was on two different antibiotics continually. Two days later the results came back. After 2 more debridment surgeries and a small skin graft, we left the hospital after 5 days there. Ethan had one more outpatient debridement surgery 8 days later (we had not redressed the wound since the the hospital, doctor's orders), the NF was still there and growing. After two months of physical therapy his fingers and wrist movement is still slightly impaired. He wears a hand splint at night to stretch his ligaments affected by the scar tissue. His bulging scar is about 4 inches long and runs from his knuckles to about 1 inch past his wrist. They say the scar will go down over the next year and hopefully he will regain full movement.We are so blessed to have our little boy. Thank you for creating this website/foundation. It helped us understand this disease and realize how lucky we really are to have our little boy still with us.

February 18, 2009                      March 3, 2009                        May 4, 2009