Cellulitis on leg and MDS

[bill4872]

Hello forum members. My Mom is, I am afraid, in the final last stages of MDS. She was recently hospitalized 11 days ago after slipping out of bed and spending several hours on the floor too weak to get up. At the hospital she was also diagnosed with cellulitis, and had been taking IV antibiotics for 11 days now with only slight improvement. The leg infection seems to have coalesced into about 8-10 scattered dark blotches, and the doctors aren’t sure what these blotches are. They think it may be a sign of leukemia. Or could be blood. Does anyone have experience with anything like this?

She is starting a morphine drip tonight to ease the pain. Hopefully she will feel better soon with that.

[sugarwhale]

Dear Bill,
My mom had cellulitis also about 3 years ago. This was due to the fact that the Thalidomide which she was then taking caused her to itch. She’d scratch the daylights out of her legs and bacteria entered. She caught the infection in time, and was never hospitalized. The Thalidomide stopped working shortly thereafter, and my mom was transfusion-dependent. Last March she started Revlimid. She has been just fine! I mean, she acts as young as I am. She’s doing GREAT!
Of course, I have no idea what your mom is suffering with. All MDS patients are different. I just want to tell you that your mom may well be OK. I remember that my mom got really sick with the cellulitis; we were frightened, to say the least. Yet, she got OK, and now she’s a whole lot BETTER than OK. By the way, my mom STILL has a couple of those dark blotches on her leg. From what you describe, it’s the cellulitis. Of course, I don’t know. But that’s what happened to MY mom. Best wishes to you and your mom! Remember that NO ONE knows when we are going to die. My mom was told that she would die within the next 2 years; that was in 1976. So, have hope! If I can be of any help, just email me.
~~~ Janet

[gemloyear]

Bill, My husband had cellulitis and also had the dark spots in his leg, No one ever said but I assumed that it was blood leeching into the tissues. It took a long time for it to fade.
Ellie

[Cherbear]

Hi all,
I’ve been having bouts with cellulitis for about a year and a half, on and off. I just had my last bout with it the week of Christmas – ugh. I developed the dark spots in my ankle, kind of like a ring. I thought it looked like petechia, but am not sure. I was told that the cellulitis is either a staph or strep infection of the skin and that I’m more prone to having it due to the CMML. I seem to get it in one or both of my lower calfs/ankles. The last 2 times I got it, I was under a lot of stress, first getting ready for my son’s wedding; second getting ready for Christmas. I got a high fever for about a day each time and this last time it took longer for the antibiotics to work. It used to be that when I was under a lot of stress, I would get a pimple! This is a bit worse and it stinks. I’d rather have a pimple.

Before I was dx’d with CMML, I had never heard of cellulitis! Since then I overheard a doctor talking about cellulitis being associated with people who weren’t very clean. I was very offended because that is not me!

[g-masews]

For many people with MDS, skin infections are a factor, particularly cellulitis. My husband had his first case two Christmas’ ago, from his toes to his hip. Drs. thought it was just a fluke thing since they could find no primary site of infection (altho it can be the size of a pin poke). Four months later he got it again in his arm; again no primary infection. It was at that time they did some blood work, discovered pancytopenia, did BMB and diagnosed MDS. We realized he had probably had MDS for several years and they thought the cellulitis was the first sign of the disease beginning it’s decline. The infection did clear up without hospitalization, just some strong antibiotics, and he has never had another single symptom of this disease. He got a new dr. last month, and when he pulled up his blood test results from the past three years (even before we knew he had MDS) he saw that during that four month spell in which he got cellulitis twice, his neutraphils had dropped to .2 while they have been in the 1.0 range the rest of the time. Neutraphils are the first line of defense in fighting infection, often skin infections as I said, and Drs. watch for that in the blood tests the patient has regularly. They can give shots of Nuprogen (I think) to help bring that up when it drops. That’s all I know regarding cellulitis, but my husband’s toes have been black for several years, even before this disease. Drs. just shrug their shoulders and ignore it if it doesn’t bother him, which it doesn’t.

[gemloyear]

Hi all, I surely hope that cellulitis is not a sigh of MDS. My brother-in-law has had two bouts of it twice now that I know of. He has had it from gnat bites from working in his yard. We were told that it could come from a small scratch or bug bites. However when your immune system is low one is more prone to skin infections.It needs to be treated right away as it can turn into sepsis.
Take care, Ellie

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