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BACTERIA STIPHILOCOCO AUREUS...True Story by María Hernández Batista
August 24 2023
Mery, as we all know her, is a great sportswoman, a humble person, a fighter and a warrior.
She achieves everything she sets out to do with her characteristic determination. When she was training hurdles in athletics, it didn't matter if it was summer and it was very hot or winter and it was raining. Many times her trainer would be in hand with her umbrella and despite the rain she didn't want to stop doing what she liked the most "TRAINING AND IMPROVING".
At that time she was practising Athletics in the 100m Hurdles, which was her speciality and what she liked the most.
He was preparing for the Club League and he had the minimum standard to go to the Spanish Individual Championships to be held in Mallorca a few months later. By bad luck or who knows why she was unable to attend as she had to fight for her life and she managed to fight against herself and win the battle against the enemy that she met at that time, "Staphylococcus Aureus bacteria".
That day she didn't know that her life was going to change in the blink of an eye. She left one of her training sessions at the track where she had spent her whole life and went home feeling a bit ill but she put it down to a simple flu or something similar, "which you will see below was not the case".
The next day when she tried to get up from her bed she started a whole Calvary for her and for all her family when she saw that Mery that day at the beginning of June 2010 when she was one month away from her 22nd birthday and had a whole life ahead of her to enjoy, she started to feel very weak. Her body did not respond normally, she felt weak, exhausted and so on. Her right knee looked like an athletics throwing ball because it was so swollen and very hot, "something was happening in her body".
Mery was admitted to the Hospital Universitario de la Laguna where she was carefully observed. The doctors set to work with all their knowledge and it was here that they saw that the colour of the liquid extracted from her swollen knee was not normal. That Friday she was operated on and underwent up to 4 operations over a period of days on her knee.
She remembers waking up after the operation and vomiting blood. She has a high fever and the doctors decide to induce a coma, where she struggled for 50 days. Who knows where Mery's mind was during those 50 days when she was asleep, "surely dreaming about one of the trips she always dreamed of making".
Every Friday Mery had to struggle to pass a higher and higher hurdle in the ICU while she slept in order to save her life. She knew that even if she was asleep she had to think that if she fell down she had to get up because these Fridays were very difficult days for the doctors and the family because something always happened to her skin and it would get worse.
Bacteria was in her blood and her heart was pumping it all over her body doing its due damage. They thought that with medication and other things they had killed the bacteria but that was not the case.... Pneumonia and other major problems he would have. The Mitral Valve of his heart had been fucked up at that time by the Bacteria and it had to be replaced as his life was in danger. Nobody doubted that it had to be replaced by an animal Pig Valve or a Metal Valve .
The doctors with the consent of his parents took the decision for the Metal Valve as it was for life and not having to be intervening every 10 years as happens with the Pig Valve to avoid major evils such as infections and so on. I now think how beautiful are those war scars that make her unique when you see what the Doctors had to fight for and for her, cutting her open and breaking her sternum to save her life and to be able to work on her weak heart in those moments "I WILL BE THANKFUL FOR ALL MY LIFE".
Days went by and the Girl in Cubicle number 23, as she was known in the ICU, did not respond medically as expected and all the alarm bells were ringing again.
Test after test showed that something else was going on. Yes, the restless Bacteria had passed to her brain creating more than one problem and damaging it. His head was cut open and he had to undergo surgery to scrape off part of his brain on the lower left side without knowing what damage it could cause. It was not known if it would affect his speech, walking and other more serious things.
Operation again on another Friday and this time they have got rid of the damn bacteria after about 50 days. When he wants to put the bone of his own head his own body when they opened to work inside his body rejects the bone of the skull and it is when he sends abroad to ask for a plate of a different material to our leather so that his body does not reject it again and can close his head with this magnificent staples which have left a beautiful and unique scar "Mery is Unique".
After a few days she is taken off sedation, the tracheotomy is removed and she is woken up little by little to see what had affected the operation on her head and so on. Mery woke up and saw that because of the tracheotomy she could not speak, she could see that her right side could not move. .... This is because her operation on the left side of her head affects the right side of her body when there are lesions in it "like an Ictus".
She saw that she couldn't do her daily things by herself, that she lacked kilos as she had left the ICU with 35 kilos, "when she entered she weighed twice as much", with her hair shaved because of her interventions, her eye black and bloody because of the blood spills....
It was here that she gradually became aware of her situation, as she couldn't even walk on her own. When she was sat on the toilet, her bones ached when she sat on it.
Thank God that day was finally a respite for all the doctors who saved her life and for her family who, as she says, missed the World Cup won by Spain and missed her birthday when she was in an induced coma in the HUC "even in this it was different how to take things" I tell her they missed the World Cup, just as you missed celebrating your birthday that year but I know that you won your best race and that is that you won the great battle "Fight for your life".
You found strength where there was none and with the support of your family and above all your strength of will, it was here that you began to see a light in the tunnel and to be even freer than you were at that time. Like a butterfly spreads its wings to fly and enjoy those currents that it catches in the air... Mery opened her mind and began to fight every day, every hour to be able to enjoy herself as that butterfly did when she flew.
The post hospital was not easy because she had her limitations due to the fact that she had to be in a wheelchair. It was difficult for her to speak, she could not walk on her own, as she was right-handed and had little or no mobility on her right side, she had to start learning from scratch with her left side, working hard. She learnt to write with her left hand, to tie her shoelaces with only one hand, to fasten her bra by herself and other things that we see as normal for us but not for her at that time "I challenge you to do the same with your left hand".
Thanks to the help of that Sports Doctor A.J.G.P. that we always have in anonymity and of course to those Doctors and rehabilitators that saved her life. We will be grateful to them every day.
With A.J.G.P. she learned to laugh again, to bring out her good humour, to talk, to swear, to cry, to learn to pick up a fork and a knife, to eat alone, to not be afraid of what people will say when they see her like that, to teach her to walk again, to fall down, to get up and many other things such as gaining muscle, weight, self-confidence, elasticity and above all CONFIDENCE.
I think that the discipline in life plus the positive attitude that we ourselves put into our lives will be what makes us think positive and not to hesitate when we fall either by work, family problems, illness, stress, depression, mental health problems .... we always have to get up.
These true stories of people like Mery have to teach us that with all that she has fought for over the years, the rest of us can also do it for ourselves and for those around us.
Sometimes it is not easy to cross that dark tunnel, but what we do want to tell you is that no matter how dark life gets, there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel to help us get out of that dark hole we have got ourselves into.
Who would have thought that because of the Bacteria that destroyed Mery I would have fallen in love with her when I saw her every day in her rehabilitation at the Medical Clinic of a good friend who trained me for several Ironman Distance Triathlons that I was able to finish in Lanzarote. I never thought that this person would be Celestino, friend, trainer and rehabilitator of Mery at the same time. His words were "Mery is a time bomb, you will be sure that you will want to start dating her because if I told him I had a knot in my stomach for months that I could not stand it anymore, I even threw up a couple of times because of the stress I was under when I made a big decision. This beautiful relationship has led us after 12 years of living together to get married at the end of May 2023.
We support each other at all times, before we started we talked about many things and we also talked about the fact that a couple is there for better and for worse as we said to each other more than 12 years ago and that it would not be easy but here we are and I want to say that it has been very nice from the beginning.
The truth is that since June 2010 Mery had not had any setbacks but last year around May everything started to change again for the worse.
Coming from a Triathlon in Tenerife where I went to participate and spend a few days with my parents, my nieces, my brother-in-law, my sister and a great friend with his two daughters.... Mery started to feel strange and to ramble on with words that didn't make sense when she talked to me and her mother when we were at home. We asked her some questions and we realised that something was wrong because she was not responding well to our questions. We went straight to the University Hospital of La Laguna, we went to the emergency room and he was having trouble speaking, we couldn't understand what he was saying. He wanted to say his name as well as write it when the nurse asked him and he could not.
We all felt bad when we saw that he was burning with fever and his body temperature was not dropping and he seemed to be absent. After a few days and after inducing a coma in the intensive care unit, where she was in a coma for about two months, the doctors again did not know what was going on. In the end, having the operation on her head, she was having epileptic seizures in her brain every few seconds because of the plaque and her scar, so they induced a coma so as not to cause her much more brain damage and other damage than she had suffered for the first time years before.
Days after days of uncertainty we talked to the doctors, tests after tests, hospital bacteria he had caught in the ICU, his lungs were flooded, treatment for bacteria and other viruses, the fever did not go down. His body was not responding well. Cold wet blankets over her body to lower her temperature, monitored everywhere, blood tests, transfusions, tracheotomy and so on for two months, all of this was a "no life" for me and those around her.
My house was empty, I felt lonely and I couldn't sleep when I came home from the hospital at night but I knew she would fight again, my heart was empty, our families were devastated until the end of June 2022 and thanks to all the doctors and doctors who saved Mery's life again.
This time she escaped again and won the second battle and I am grateful for that because this time she was able to get out on her own, although she was a bit weak, leaning on me.
Mery is now able to drive her adapted car, go on a tandem trip and ride for miles around Ireland with me. She can do the Camino de Santiago on a tandem bike and on foot, go hiking, pass a track and field hurdle adapted to other sizes than she used to do years ago, jogging and other things.
Nowadays he teaches children in an athletics school in Los Realejos "Puerto Cruz Realejos". He lives a normal life in spite of some sequelae.
She is a clear example of overcoming and admiration for all of us who know her.
Thanks to all of you for letting me take a little time to read this story and to Surfing Colors for publishing it. I hope that it will make more than one of you think about life and never give up. I also want to tell you that Love exists.
Back
She achieves everything she sets out to do with her characteristic determination. When she was training hurdles in athletics, it didn't matter if it was summer and it was very hot or winter and it was raining. Many times her trainer would be in hand with her umbrella and despite the rain she didn't want to stop doing what she liked the most "TRAINING AND IMPROVING".
At that time she was practising Athletics in the 100m Hurdles, which was her speciality and what she liked the most.
He was preparing for the Club League and he had the minimum standard to go to the Spanish Individual Championships to be held in Mallorca a few months later. By bad luck or who knows why she was unable to attend as she had to fight for her life and she managed to fight against herself and win the battle against the enemy that she met at that time, "Staphylococcus Aureus bacteria".
That day she didn't know that her life was going to change in the blink of an eye. She left one of her training sessions at the track where she had spent her whole life and went home feeling a bit ill but she put it down to a simple flu or something similar, "which you will see below was not the case".
The next day when she tried to get up from her bed she started a whole Calvary for her and for all her family when she saw that Mery that day at the beginning of June 2010 when she was one month away from her 22nd birthday and had a whole life ahead of her to enjoy, she started to feel very weak. Her body did not respond normally, she felt weak, exhausted and so on. Her right knee looked like an athletics throwing ball because it was so swollen and very hot, "something was happening in her body".
Mery was admitted to the Hospital Universitario de la Laguna where she was carefully observed. The doctors set to work with all their knowledge and it was here that they saw that the colour of the liquid extracted from her swollen knee was not normal. That Friday she was operated on and underwent up to 4 operations over a period of days on her knee.
She remembers waking up after the operation and vomiting blood. She has a high fever and the doctors decide to induce a coma, where she struggled for 50 days. Who knows where Mery's mind was during those 50 days when she was asleep, "surely dreaming about one of the trips she always dreamed of making".
Every Friday Mery had to struggle to pass a higher and higher hurdle in the ICU while she slept in order to save her life. She knew that even if she was asleep she had to think that if she fell down she had to get up because these Fridays were very difficult days for the doctors and the family because something always happened to her skin and it would get worse.
Bacteria was in her blood and her heart was pumping it all over her body doing its due damage. They thought that with medication and other things they had killed the bacteria but that was not the case.... Pneumonia and other major problems he would have. The Mitral Valve of his heart had been fucked up at that time by the Bacteria and it had to be replaced as his life was in danger. Nobody doubted that it had to be replaced by an animal Pig Valve or a Metal Valve .
The doctors with the consent of his parents took the decision for the Metal Valve as it was for life and not having to be intervening every 10 years as happens with the Pig Valve to avoid major evils such as infections and so on. I now think how beautiful are those war scars that make her unique when you see what the Doctors had to fight for and for her, cutting her open and breaking her sternum to save her life and to be able to work on her weak heart in those moments "I WILL BE THANKFUL FOR ALL MY LIFE".
Days went by and the Girl in Cubicle number 23, as she was known in the ICU, did not respond medically as expected and all the alarm bells were ringing again.
Test after test showed that something else was going on. Yes, the restless Bacteria had passed to her brain creating more than one problem and damaging it. His head was cut open and he had to undergo surgery to scrape off part of his brain on the lower left side without knowing what damage it could cause. It was not known if it would affect his speech, walking and other more serious things.
Operation again on another Friday and this time they have got rid of the damn bacteria after about 50 days. When he wants to put the bone of his own head his own body when they opened to work inside his body rejects the bone of the skull and it is when he sends abroad to ask for a plate of a different material to our leather so that his body does not reject it again and can close his head with this magnificent staples which have left a beautiful and unique scar "Mery is Unique".
After a few days she is taken off sedation, the tracheotomy is removed and she is woken up little by little to see what had affected the operation on her head and so on. Mery woke up and saw that because of the tracheotomy she could not speak, she could see that her right side could not move. .... This is because her operation on the left side of her head affects the right side of her body when there are lesions in it "like an Ictus".
She saw that she couldn't do her daily things by herself, that she lacked kilos as she had left the ICU with 35 kilos, "when she entered she weighed twice as much", with her hair shaved because of her interventions, her eye black and bloody because of the blood spills....
It was here that she gradually became aware of her situation, as she couldn't even walk on her own. When she was sat on the toilet, her bones ached when she sat on it.
Thank God that day was finally a respite for all the doctors who saved her life and for her family who, as she says, missed the World Cup won by Spain and missed her birthday when she was in an induced coma in the HUC "even in this it was different how to take things" I tell her they missed the World Cup, just as you missed celebrating your birthday that year but I know that you won your best race and that is that you won the great battle "Fight for your life".
You found strength where there was none and with the support of your family and above all your strength of will, it was here that you began to see a light in the tunnel and to be even freer than you were at that time. Like a butterfly spreads its wings to fly and enjoy those currents that it catches in the air... Mery opened her mind and began to fight every day, every hour to be able to enjoy herself as that butterfly did when she flew.
The post hospital was not easy because she had her limitations due to the fact that she had to be in a wheelchair. It was difficult for her to speak, she could not walk on her own, as she was right-handed and had little or no mobility on her right side, she had to start learning from scratch with her left side, working hard. She learnt to write with her left hand, to tie her shoelaces with only one hand, to fasten her bra by herself and other things that we see as normal for us but not for her at that time "I challenge you to do the same with your left hand".
Thanks to the help of that Sports Doctor A.J.G.P. that we always have in anonymity and of course to those Doctors and rehabilitators that saved her life. We will be grateful to them every day.
With A.J.G.P. she learned to laugh again, to bring out her good humour, to talk, to swear, to cry, to learn to pick up a fork and a knife, to eat alone, to not be afraid of what people will say when they see her like that, to teach her to walk again, to fall down, to get up and many other things such as gaining muscle, weight, self-confidence, elasticity and above all CONFIDENCE.
I think that the discipline in life plus the positive attitude that we ourselves put into our lives will be what makes us think positive and not to hesitate when we fall either by work, family problems, illness, stress, depression, mental health problems .... we always have to get up.
These true stories of people like Mery have to teach us that with all that she has fought for over the years, the rest of us can also do it for ourselves and for those around us.
Sometimes it is not easy to cross that dark tunnel, but what we do want to tell you is that no matter how dark life gets, there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel to help us get out of that dark hole we have got ourselves into.
Who would have thought that because of the Bacteria that destroyed Mery I would have fallen in love with her when I saw her every day in her rehabilitation at the Medical Clinic of a good friend who trained me for several Ironman Distance Triathlons that I was able to finish in Lanzarote. I never thought that this person would be Celestino, friend, trainer and rehabilitator of Mery at the same time. His words were "Mery is a time bomb, you will be sure that you will want to start dating her because if I told him I had a knot in my stomach for months that I could not stand it anymore, I even threw up a couple of times because of the stress I was under when I made a big decision. This beautiful relationship has led us after 12 years of living together to get married at the end of May 2023.
We support each other at all times, before we started we talked about many things and we also talked about the fact that a couple is there for better and for worse as we said to each other more than 12 years ago and that it would not be easy but here we are and I want to say that it has been very nice from the beginning.
The truth is that since June 2010 Mery had not had any setbacks but last year around May everything started to change again for the worse.
Coming from a Triathlon in Tenerife where I went to participate and spend a few days with my parents, my nieces, my brother-in-law, my sister and a great friend with his two daughters.... Mery started to feel strange and to ramble on with words that didn't make sense when she talked to me and her mother when we were at home. We asked her some questions and we realised that something was wrong because she was not responding well to our questions. We went straight to the University Hospital of La Laguna, we went to the emergency room and he was having trouble speaking, we couldn't understand what he was saying. He wanted to say his name as well as write it when the nurse asked him and he could not.
We all felt bad when we saw that he was burning with fever and his body temperature was not dropping and he seemed to be absent. After a few days and after inducing a coma in the intensive care unit, where she was in a coma for about two months, the doctors again did not know what was going on. In the end, having the operation on her head, she was having epileptic seizures in her brain every few seconds because of the plaque and her scar, so they induced a coma so as not to cause her much more brain damage and other damage than she had suffered for the first time years before.
Days after days of uncertainty we talked to the doctors, tests after tests, hospital bacteria he had caught in the ICU, his lungs were flooded, treatment for bacteria and other viruses, the fever did not go down. His body was not responding well. Cold wet blankets over her body to lower her temperature, monitored everywhere, blood tests, transfusions, tracheotomy and so on for two months, all of this was a "no life" for me and those around her.
My house was empty, I felt lonely and I couldn't sleep when I came home from the hospital at night but I knew she would fight again, my heart was empty, our families were devastated until the end of June 2022 and thanks to all the doctors and doctors who saved Mery's life again.
This time she escaped again and won the second battle and I am grateful for that because this time she was able to get out on her own, although she was a bit weak, leaning on me.
Mery is now able to drive her adapted car, go on a tandem trip and ride for miles around Ireland with me. She can do the Camino de Santiago on a tandem bike and on foot, go hiking, pass a track and field hurdle adapted to other sizes than she used to do years ago, jogging and other things.
Nowadays he teaches children in an athletics school in Los Realejos "Puerto Cruz Realejos". He lives a normal life in spite of some sequelae.
She is a clear example of overcoming and admiration for all of us who know her.
Thanks to all of you for letting me take a little time to read this story and to Surfing Colors for publishing it. I hope that it will make more than one of you think about life and never give up. I also want to tell you that Love exists.