I am flabbergasted.  First of all I am a recovering hypochondriac, not really but I get really psyched up about anything that could possibly be wrong w/ me.  I am so thankful for the Internet because I can generally calm my worrying by reading an easy to find list of symptoms. In October of last year while at the park w/ the girls I scratched my elbow on this climbing wall after a while my whole arm became gigantic and bright red.  It took a long time to finally get rid of the staph and later I developed what is commonly referred to as scarlet fever (I think that is what they said). Anyway it involved my whole chest turning red accompanied by strep throat.  The scarlet fever thing is in the same family as staph somehow again I know this thanks to google. That was taken care of w/ a nice shot in the ass which I had a generalized allergic reaction to. My whole point in this pointless medical history is that I didn't want to take any chances w/ staph.  I began looking up some info after I sent you the last email and there were all these posts from whining women just like me that said it started under my arm some said they thought it was an ingrown hair and anyway the next thing that happened to these women  was a breakout of giant bumps down their spine.  YUCK!!! Anyway this prompted me to wake up Lilli (15 month old) and grab Kenzie (4 yr old) and go to the doctor immediately.  I just got back.  The only reason that we now have MRSA (antibiotic resistant staph) is because people built up an immunity to the current antibiotics due to the doctors over prescribing them and the inability of  idiots to finish their  medicine . So what I don't understand is now that they know how to treat it why in the hell don't they test for it before they just hand you a list of prescriptions? I am hoping that maybe I have not read enough about this to be correct in my observation which I commonly do, but it just seems like they would want to test for something before they hand out drugs that someone that may not need them.  I guess the lunches from the pharmaceutical reps and the job security for future scientists seem like the best option to them. Why don't they just start an online medical school for general practitioners; click here for your medical license.