Jo Gilchrist, a 27-year-old woman in Australia, will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair after sharing her best friend’s makeup brush, Bustle reports. Her friend was unknowingly carrying staph infection bacteria on her face, so when Gilchrist used the concealer brush to cover a pimple, it was transferred onto her own skin.
She started having back pain, which eventually grew to be unbearable. At first, doctors had trouble diagnosing Gilchrist. But when her legs began to go numb, she underwent emergency surgery in which doctors discovered she was suffering from a “community-associated MRSA — an antibiotic-resistant form of golden staph infection,” according to the UK’s Daily Mail.
The infection had damaged her spine to such an extent that she will never walk again, and will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. However, Gilchrist has kept a positive attitude about the scary situation. “I was so lucky it went to my spine…if it went to my brain I would have died, and if it had went to my limbs they would have been amputated,” she said.
Our mamas always told us not to share drinks or makeup. But like every other teenage girl, I’ve shared both of these, multiple times. I know everything about my friends, they’re not sick, or in some way “dirty”, so sharing with them only seems to make us closer, right? Apparently not. Moral of the story folks, although this may be a rare situation, do not share makeup (that means makeup brushes included!). The scary truth is that staph infection isn’t the only thing you can contract from sharing these kind’s of items. So keep your makeup brushes clean and to yourself! Your health will thank you for it.
