11:19 AM CDT on Wednesday, May 24, 2006

By BRAD WATSON / WFAA-TV

Janice Carr, DMN archive

MRSA has spread from hospitals to nail salons

Chris Kneese recalls the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year as days of misery.

"I was just crying in pain. We didn't know what was wrong with my leg," she said.

She says the first doctor she saw thought she had a spider bite.

"Several days later it got worse and the infection grew and it got bigger and bigger and bigger," she added. "Then I noticed another spot on the same leg in a different area."

Another ten days went by and lesions appeared.

"We finally did a culture which came back MRSA and realized that it was not a spider bite it was indeed a staph infection," she said.

MRSA is an aggressive bacteria resistant to common antibiotics.

Just days before the sores broke out, Kneese says she got a pedicure in a whirlpool foot spa at a Dallas area nail salon.

The spas can harbor bacteria, if not disinfected correctly.

Kneese is one of several women who tell News 8 that only after weeks of suffering and seeing numerous doctors did they learn the cause of the lesions.

Dallas County's chief epidemiologist, Dr. John Carlo, confirms some doctors misdiagnose them.

"They can be mistaken quite commonly for other illnesses, for bites or something along those lines," said Dr. Carlo.

But as MRSA spreads from hospitals to new locations, such as salons, some internists and dermatologists just aren't asking the right questions about MRSA and mycobacteria.

"As I asked more and more of my friends and people that I found out who had this, they weren't asked those questions early on either," said Kneese.

She points to the permanent scars from the sores that healed after she went to a fourth doctor, an infectious disease specialist.

"The infectious disease doctor is the one who was able to tell me what I had, what the risks were, what the dangers were and he knew right off the bat," Kneese continued.

"It's essentially a call to arms for everybody to be aware that we've got some emerging threats here," said Dr. Carlo.

Kneese's days of pain are over.

She just wishes the answers would have come sooner.