gildersleeve

... or "hastened thither" or "hastens thither" ....?

Do "essays" scare you off with fears of boredom? Do you only have the patience to read the shorter ones?

And does it make any difference to this if the question is one that really grabs your interest?

I've looked at websites, and they're mostly geared to treatment of it in hospital. I need to know how to take care of someone with a VRE when they're at home (it's just for a couple of days).

All that the websites say is that VRE is spread by physical contact, so keep washing your hands with soap and water. But how long do these things live? Does freezing them kill them? If I touch a surface that has the gal's VRE germs on it, what are my chances of developing either a colony or an infection, just from transferring the germ to my skin? Do I have to wash my hands every time I touch anything she did?

Or do the germs die off on someone's skin (assuming they aren't washed off with soap&water)? Or do they live for a while on the skin, but only colonize/infect the person if the person gets a cut there, or rubs their eyes, or touches their tongue, etc? How does the germ get from a clean touch-contact point to well inside the body, where it can do real damage?

When I visited her in the hospital, I had to put on a sterile gown and latex gloves, and dispose of those into a contaminated-waste container as soon as I left the room. One day, she had to have a procedure done while I was there; when I left the room for that, I had to dispose of the stuff I was already wearing, disinfect my hands, and don a new set of gown-&-gloves when I went back in. Plus, the nurses were (probably quite rightly) snarky about visitors disinfecting hands before and after visits to patients.

And yet I can't find info about "how clean is clean enough" for dealing with someone who has this, when they're at home. I can't disinfect her whole house! Help anyone?