Brandon Lauer had a painful swelling in his leg. But he kept pushing himself through that pain, determined to fly with his wrestlers on the Maryland National Team to Fargo, N.D., for the Junior National Championships.

Two nights before he was scheduled to leave, Dr. Richard Kirby convinced Lauer to change his plans.

"He says to me, not to be alarmed, but I need to go to the hospital immediately because there's a serious infection in my leg," recalled Lauer, the River Hill head coach and national team freestyle coach.

The infection was methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a strain of staph infection that's resistant to the antibiotics commonly used to treat infections. The infection was tearing through his right leg and would have spread further if not for Kirby's response.

"My whole fear was that he was going to fly to Fargo ... it could have spread to his abdomen, vital organs," said Kirby, who helped treat Lauer.

Five surgeries later, Lauer was finally clear of MRSA. Three months later, he is still trying to get back to where he was before the infection invaded his life.

"If I go to Fargo, I probably don't wake up one morning, or I definitely lose my leg," said Lauer, an undefeated three-time state champion at River Hill from 1997 to 2000, winning 111 consecutive matches.

'Didn't think anything of it'

Lauer, 26, was an All-American wrestler as a sophomore at West Virginia University in 2003. He still keeps himself in peak physical condition, wrestling in practice with some of the state's top competitors. Because he works out a lot, it's not uncommon for him to find some sweat pimples, or folliculitus, on his leg.

On July 12, he treated one sweat pimple the way he usually does -- he squeezed it.

"I've had them in the past, nothing out of the ordinary ... I tried to pop one of them and it was pretty painful; it didn't seem that it was going to pop and it got real agitated," Lauer said.

The next day the bump was the size of a quarter. And it was very red and tender.

"That was out of the ordinary," he said.

Lauer went on with his schedule, coaching the national team through three practice sessions at McDonogh. He showed the sore to a trainer, who treated it as a boil. "We heated it three times that day and nothing came of it," Lauer said.

If anything, the leg was getting worse. Lauer was starting to worry. He talked with a friend who had a similar sore on his leg and was being treated for a staph infection.

"I was freaked out at that point," Lauer said. "I'm thinking, 'I've got a staph infection. I shouldn't be wrestling with these kids. I need to go get this checked out.' "

That night, Lauer went to Howard County General Hospital. Doctors gave him some Bactrim, a basic antibiotic, and told Lauer to come back or call his doctor if the swelling continued.

The next day, the pain was worse, so Lauer made an appointment to see his doctor on Thursday -- the day before he was scheduled to fly to Fargo.

"I knew something was wrong. I didn't know what, but I wanted to see my doctor," Lauer said.

'Go to the hospital'

The day before he was scheduled to see his doctor, Lauer awoke to find that his right quadricep had swollen to twice the size of his left. When he tried to get out of bed, he could barely walk.

Still, he put in another day at camp. That evening, though, he heard words he couldn't ignore.

Kirby, an anesthesiogist at Montgomery General Hospital and the father of River Hill wrestlers Cameron and Sean Kirby, came to McDonogh to pick up Cameron. He also came to see Lauer, who had called him earlier that day to ask if he'd examine his leg.

One look is all it took.

"I said, 'You're going to have surgery tonight,' " Kirby recalled. "His (infection) had gone all the way from his hip to his kneecap. I suspected MRSA. It's becoming more and more common."

Lauer doesn't know how he contracted MRSA, just that it entered his body through the sweat pimple on his leg. He doesn't think it came from wrestling because of the measures wrestlers take to prevent infection -- showering after every session and mopping the mats with disinfectant, for example.

Lauer called his wife, Cristin, to tell her to meet him at the hospital. He was scheduled for surgery at 6 a.m.

'Race against time'

About 30 hours after the surgery, which involved opening the wound and irrigating it with antibiotic, Lauer's leg began to swell again and a test result came back confirming the infection was MRSA.

"At this point it's a race against time," Lauer said. "Because if the MRSA continues to travel, if it gets in my lymph nodes, if it gets in my bloodstream, it can attack my vital organs.

"If it attacks my vital organs, I will die. If it gets into my joints, I will lose my limbs."

That, Lauer said, was when he realized, "I'm not going anywhere. I need to get better. This is a little more serious than I thought."

When Lauer first went into the hospital, Cristin Lauer was scared, but still felt that everything was under control. But at this point she began to grasp the gravity of the situation.

"It was after the first surgery didn't work that I started thinking, 'What in the world is going on?' " said Cristin Lauer, who coaches cross country at River Hill with Brandon's father, Earl Lauer.

Another surgery was scheduled immediately. This time surgeons used a suction tool to remove infected matter from his hip all the way to his knee. They also put Lauer on a drug called Cubicin (daptomycin), which Lauer called, "the most aggressive MRSA drug in America.

"Before the second surgery (the doctors treating him told him that), 'If this surgery doesn't work, we can't help you anymore,' " Cristin Lauer said.

The MRSA had eaten through his skin and fascia, or connective tissue, and was headed into his muscle, doctors told him. But the new antibiotic seemed to be working. Things began to return to normal.

Because of an unsuccessful procedure to drain and close the wound with a device called a sponge vac, Lauer's leg began to swell again.

"This time it was like three times the size of my other leg ... it was so big and the pressure was so great that I seriously wanted to slice my leg to relieve the pressure," Lauer said.

After another surgery to clear out the infection again, Lauer's wound was drained manually, with silicone tubes. He spent another three days in the hospital. When he finally left, he was on home intravenous antibiotics for about a week. Then he went in for a final surgery to have the wound closed. A week later, the stitches were removed. He has been rehabbing for the last few weeks.

'Recovery will take time'

Lauer is not yet back to full strength, but he's getting closer. He hopes to be there by Nov. 15, when wrestling season starts.

His wife says Lauer still has a way to go.

She ran the Baltimore Marathon Oct. 11 and her husband was there to watch and cheer her on.

"Standing around four hours, he was more spent than I was," Cristin said.

Kirby said Lauer's recovery will take time. "His leg was significantly swollen, six to eight weeks of inactivity," Kirby said. "He's a world-class athlete, so it will take some time to build back to where he wants to be."

Lauer says the experience has become a teaching point for his students and wrestlers.

"They've listened to my story, the wrestlers and the (physical education) students, about showering, taking home their gym uniform so it doesn't sit in their P.E. locker and fester and grow mold.

"Some kids think it's a rite of passage ... to never have your shirt washed. Well, guess what? Now that I had MRSA, you're taking your stuff home, because I'm not going to have a breeding ground where I could potentially get this. Because it cost me 12 days of my life, five surgeries, I could have lost my leg, I could have died.

"I don't even want to think about what could have happened, because it was so realistic that it could have happened that way."

---

user comments (0)