It's Superbug. But MRSA won't save the day.

    Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is dubbed a "superbug" because of its tenacity against treatment. Once confined mainly to hospitals, MRSA is now spreading through the general population. Highly communicable, it can cause skin, surgical and catheter site infections, blood poisoning, pneumonia and death.

     "I happened to have the worst strain possible," says Linda Ramsdill of Saratoga. "They wanted to cut my leg off and I wouldn't let them."

    Ramsdill was in the hospital for a knee replacement in 2003 when MRSA attacked her kneecap. The wound was 8 inches long, 4 inches wide and deep enough to see the bone.

    "They kept doing at least five kinds of surgeries," Ramsdill says. "I was allergic to the antibiotics they put me on. I went into renal failure. I was out of it for a very long time. I was on so many drugs, I thought there was a monkey in my room."

    At one point, her temperature was 105. What remained of her infected patella and tendon were removed. She needed multiple surgeries to grow new bone.

    "When he finally took the cast off, and said, 'OK. Go walk,' I burst into tears," Ramsdill says. "I hadn't had any weight on my leg for 3-1/2 years. One leg is straight -- ugly and straight. I have a limp, but all I keep saying is I have my leg."

    Today, the former wallpaper hanger is on disability, but she never sued. "'Nowadays there's so much infection in the hospital, that's the chance you take.' That's what the lawyers said to me. Malpractice is very hard to prove," she says.

    Around since the dawn of humanity, staph bacteria are constantly morphing. "Staph is a very common, ubiquitous organism," says Megan Helmecke, infection preventionist at Albany Medical Center. "You're going to find it on people, countertops -- all over the place. When you use antibiotics, you're wiping out the susceptible bacteria. The strong, resistant ones survive. That's why we emphasize only treating with antibiotics when there's actually a bacterial infection there. People taking antibiotics inappropriately have a lot to do with it."

    Most staph strains are drug-resistant, says Nicole Coffin, spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Nationwide, MRSA killed nearly 19,000 people and infected about 95,000 in 2007, according to the latest CDC statistics.

    The vast majority of MRSA cases are reported in healthcare settings, such as hospitals, nursing homes and dialysis centers. However, community-associated MRSA infections "have increased rapidly" over the past decade, especially among groups such as teams, inmates and military personnel, according to the CDC.

    Mohonasen High School athlete Kyle Gagnon died in 2009 from MRSA pneumonia. In 2011, three Shenendehowa students contracted MRSA. In 2006, Schenectady County Jail reportedly suffered several outbreaks.

    "Since the late 1990s, it's pushed into the community," Helmecke says. "There are multiple strains. In the hospitals, the strains typically cause more invasive diseases like pneumonia. The one most common in the community affects skin and soft tissue. It's hard to say on the community side what's going on, because there aren't real statistics for community level data."

    New York does not require reporting of MRSA, although legislation is pending to do so. In a Monroe County surveillance program, 1,277 cases of invasive MRSA occurred between April 2004 and July 2007. One in 20 were community associated. Between 2005 and 2006, community MRSA rates rose from 1.5 to 4.6 cases per 100,000 and healthcare MRSA rates rose from 40 to 55 cases per 100,000 in Monroe County.

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