 This is State Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Hello, how are you doing? Gordo the Tech Sour here. Welcome to another exciting episode, number 155 in the series of Hibachi Talk. I've got my good old buddy, my new co-host, Rick's the Fundmeister. Great to be here again. And we have Don Ariyoshi. The last name may sound somewhat familiar. We'll talk about that in a minute. But we're not going to talk about politics. We've got Don Ariyoshi here. We're going to talk about bacteria in Hawaii. Staff strep lepto. There's a whole bunch of things happening. And Don has gotten himself so involved in the community. It's a great story. So grab a chair, grab a libation, sit down, and we'll talk about bacteria in Hawaii. But first, I'd like to give the viewers a little background on who you are. Other than the fact that you're the son of a former governor, which we'll get that cleared up real early. And this is not a political show. So a little bit of background on yourself. Yeah, so while I work at Morgan Stanley, what I do is I try to help people and help the community. And one of the things that got involved in is bacterial awareness because my wife had an infection in Soded High. And she almost passed away, but she made it. And I think there is a need for people to understand bacteria, how to recognize it, what to do, and share the information that they have with everybody. So there's an awareness program of bacteria because it may save a life. And so you're, and we got 28 minutes to do this show, and it's going to be hard to cover all this stuff. But you've taken it upon yourself to get out into the community and give everybody an awareness of things like MRSA, strep, the flesh eating virus, lepto, I can never say that word. Leptospirosis. Leptospirosis. And so those are pretty common bacteria in Hawaii that many people get in contact with here. And so we're going to try, in this show, to give you a sense of what they are, what the symptoms are, and then what you need to prevent them. But then also, Don goes out in the community and you're more than happy to go around to people all over the community to talk about this. Yes. So my commitment to Hawaii in this bacteria awareness program is if there's any organization that wants me to come down and share the material and actually give them a handout so they can take something home and they can share it with others. So I will make the time to appear in front of their membership and to share. I've done it with unions. I've done it with senior groups. And I like talking to the senior groups. How about Rotaries? No, I haven't done a Rotary yet. No, we need to get you to a Rotary. We've had Rotarian individuals on this show start up Rotaries too. I think that they would be excellent. I'll help you with that. Okay. Help you get to the Rotaries and things like this. Fortunately, I've never had any of these situations where I've got these bacterias. And we may pop up a couple of pictures. So for those of you that are a little bit queasy, I'll give you the heads up. There's a photo coming up you might want to or not look at it. So let's jump right into it. Talk about the first one that you had that you and I talked about. It's MRSA. So what is MRSA? So MRSA is a bacteria that was localized in hospitals. And I think about 16 years ago in Hawaii, there was cases reported about 30 miles away from a medical institution. So what MRSA is, is it's a bacteria that when you cut yourself and you need a portal for it to enter into your skin. You need an opening. You need an opening, a cut. It could be a scratch on your foot. And it enters into your body. And it's not the most serious at the beginning. And you can take care of it, antibiotics. But if you don't take care of it, then it can turn into something very serious. It could even be life threatening. So I had a MRSA in my foot on baseball field is where I picked up the bacteria. I had a scratch on my foot. I went home. That was in the morning. I went home in the afternoon. And I saw, I thought I had gout. And I took my indecine and culture sins. As many of you have gout, you know that medicine. So I took three culture sins, three indecines. By midnight something, I said something's not right. I turned on the light and I saw a red spot the size of a quarter. Like a little pimple head. And because my wife had less healing bacteria about six years ago, I knew that was an infection. So I jumped in the car. I went to Queens. They said, lucky you came in early. But even then, I was out for about a week. Wow. So, you know, we both worked at Queens. So, you know, we know that experience. So, God, I've had so many infections. I've never gone anywhere. But see, that's the real key. Because I think many of us have had infections. But the important thing with MRSA is that somehow we recognize that this isn't just another infection or an insect bite or something like that. This is something entirely different which is what was lucky for you. And you caught it early. And I think the important thing for, you know, us and for the folks that are watching this is this is, how do I know that this is MRSA? That it's not, why is it different? Or are there ways to see this differently and get on it like you did? So, like you said, I think it would be slide number three in the slide deck. I put so many together. I'm going to give you the slide deck if you want to use it for your presentations. But there's all the symptoms of MRSA. They're right here. We'll make them available off the website and so on. But when it does not heal, warm and red skin, swelling and pain in the joints, boils and blisters and fever and nausea. Do you know how long that takes for that start to show up? MRSA can work pretty quickly. I think, first of all, I want to say that if you have a cut 99.99999% of the time, hydrogen peroxide and an ointments will work. We're just talking about a small percentage. Remember iodine as a kid? But yeah, my wife does this. As soon as I get a cut, she drops the hydrogen peroxide. Yeah, yeah. And that's smart. I think preventing and reacting that way helps. But there's one out of 100 people. 1% of the population is walking around with flesh eating bacteria or MRSA bacteria on there. But because they don't have an opening, they're not getting infected. That's why it's important to wash your hands. But I think when you look at all the symptoms, you know when you have it because there is tremendous pain. It's red. It's warm. And you may be getting a fever. So speaking of the next slide. So now, preface, if you're a little squeamish and you don't like looking at certain things, then you might not want to look at this. But this is a picture of a MRSA virus next to a spider bite. And I've been bitten by a black spider. And I can tell you that spider bite looks so familiar. But look at that MRSA. That looks pretty gnarly. Yeah, yeah. So what it does is when it bites you and it goes into your skin, it may not have an infection. The area where it entered because it moves in the fat and the muscle tissues and it can go under the skin and end up in a totally different place where it entered your body. So the bacteria itself may enter that way but then it will become active when it gets somewhere else. Correct. And we're not doctors. I'm simplifying this kind of thing. So when you have, like for example, if you're diabetic and your feet are tingly and you don't have good circulation there, it may travel to areas of your foot because the antibiotic travels in your bloodstream. So it's important to get that blood and antibiotic to around where the infection is. And the thing too is they don't really know not all antibiotics work on MRSA and flesh eating. So your infectious disease specialist has to test it, culture it, and then find that right antibiotic that's going to work. It's going to work on that. So you don't necessarily get MRSA at hospitals. It could be anywhere. Correct. You've got it on the baseball field. Correct. That's amazing. Okay. So that's a form of the next virus we're going to jump into and that's the flesh eating virus bacteria. We hear a lot about that one because it makes the news quite a bit. You know, one guy that fell into the alloy. Correct. Not the alloy but the boat harbor, right? Right. Which is pretty gnarly water to begin with. Yeah. He didn't last very long after he came out and there's been a few more in the press in a little while. From the neighbor islands I know have come into us. Yeah. I mean, so the MRSA's staff, see I'm feeling like you, see I'm educating you, I love this stuff. So MRSA's staff and then so now we get into flesh eating virus strep, which we hear a lot of. So what's the difference? So what's... The flesh eating bacteria moves more faster. It's quick. It's really quick. And that's the one you really need to watch out for because that will kill you very quickly. So it's important that and you've read people where they have, they got infected, they didn't know their skin turned purple-ish or blue-ish. They got really sick and sometimes it's too late. You know. But one thing about bacteria is you know you got it because there's extreme amount of pain. And when you feel pain that, don't be tantaran about it. I mean, go... I like that term. If you think you're ill, go to the hospital because they have the antibiotics. They'll give you the strongest one they have then and later on they'll figure out which one is better for you. So yeah, don't wait. You need to react quickly with flesh eating bacteria. So is there a difference? So Merca, like you said, you got it when you scraped your foot on your foot at the baseball park. So how do I get the flesh eating one? I talked earlier about the guy that fell in the aloe. But how does that happen? It's the same way to it. You get a cut. You need it opening. So in aloe, he stepped on all the rocks. Right, he had cuts in his foot and then the bacteria was in the water and entered his system and he went home in his apartment and he waited. So, you know, waiting that long, that thing is moving, you know. So can I pass? No, I'm going to get back and forth. Can Merca be passed from person to person? Yes. Okay, can the... With it opening? With an opening. Got to have an opening. So I have to have an opening. So what about the flesh eating, the strep one? Can that be passed from person to person? Yeah, you can have that bacteria on your body. So again, it depends on who you come in contact with. Correct. And again, if you have the opening... Yes. They have a way to enter into your body then you've given them the getaway. Yes. I'm in the garden all the time and I'm hacked. Maybe I should start wearing rubber gloves in the garden. Wow. Yeah, I think people shouldn't change their activities because when I was doing it to the seniors, a lady was telling me, oh, I go in my yard. I'm not going to go anywhere. I said, no, no, no, no. I'm not scared. I don't want to scare people. It's more just to be aware of it and know what to do. So don't change your activities. Just know that if you do get it, you recognize it and you can treat it. Right. So my wife has coached me up and she's a nurse and she said, anytime you got to cut the peroxide here, I don't care what you're doing. You go take it. You put this on and that's what we're going to do. And put a band-aid on it or something but put the peroxide on it. I want to do it because I'm famous for not taking care of it. You know, I go, oh, it's just a little bit of blood. Take care. It's just going to be fine. Now we got off you go. So my wife had on Saturday night, she wasn't feeling well and I'm sorry, Friday night she wasn't feeling well. She went to work on Saturday. On Saturday night she tried eating but she couldn't hold her food down and sat at about midnight Sunday morning, one o'clock in the morning she came to see me. She said, I can't take this anymore. The pain is too bad. So I took her to the hospital and so she had the flesh in it. It was on the move. She was there for a few weeks. They stuck a trachea tube down her and they told me to expect the worse. Wow. Which I, what does that mean, you know? And then there were a couple of times there when she also on Thursday, the doctor said a conference with me and said that she's not improving. She's now got pneumonia and it doesn't look good. And I told him she's going to be fine. And then Master Hong came and worked on her and he did wonders on her. He's from the Chi Center and he didn't, he actually I think with Queens and him saved my wife's life. But then later, a week later she had meningitis and not meningitis. She had swelling in her brain so they didn't know what that was but luckily it didn't get any worse. It was not connected. Was it connected? No, it wasn't connected. Was it connected? So it wasn't meningitis but you can't get meningitis when the bacteria goes into your head. So there is a relationship then between MRSA and the flesh eating virus. There's a connection point in there. Yeah, because if, I believe if MRSA, if you don't react right away and it gets worse and worse and worse, it has the same thing like like flesh eating bacteria. And it tries to shut down your organs so what happens is when you kill the bacteria there's something called toxic syndrome where the bacteria is killed but the toxins are released in your blood and that's what's trying to shut down your kidneys, your organs. So when it gets to that point it's really how strong you are. That's why the seniors are kind of vulnerable. Yeah, versus that. Okay, we gotta believe it or not because we're already out of the show already. And we're actually doing pretty good where I think in the scheme of things. So we're gonna take a short break and we'll come back, we'll pick up where we are here with flesh eating and then we'll jump into the next part of the level. Thank you very much. I can't say that word. It's got too many syllables in it. I can't do that. Anyway, go to the next hour. We're here with Don Arayoshi and my ever famous co-host here. Don't you spin off and create another show like my other guys have done. Rick the Funmeister. Rick's the Funmeister. We'll be back in a minute after we pay some bills. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. If you drink, never drive. The host of Voice of the Veteran, seen here live every Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. As a fellow veteran and veterans advocate with over 23 years experience serving veterans, active duty, and family members, I hope to educate everyone on benefits and accessibility services by inviting professionals in the field to appear on the show. In addition, I hope to plan on inviting guest veterans to talk about their concerns and possibly offer solutions. As we navigate and work together through issues, we can all benefit. Please join me every Thursday at 1 p.m. for the Voice of the Veteran. Aloha. Aloha. How are you doing? Guard of the Tech's out here. This is Hibachi Talk, and we're talking about bacteria today, which has been a pretty fascinating show. Don Arayoshi, nice to have you here and I appreciate your community service. It's awesome. You're taking your time out of your life to educate people of what's happening in this based on your personal experience. Thanks to the fundmeister, healthcare expert, by far. So anyway, we took a break and we were looking at the flesh-eating bacteria, which has a relationship to MRSA. And so, let me, again, if you're squeamish, don't take a look at this photo, but for a couple of seconds we're going to throw up a photo, and then we'll come back and we'll talk about the symptoms in a little bit, and then we'll drop into the next one. So again, there's a photo of what... Now, you will know that you have this if you end up having a skin condition that looks like this hand. So this is not... This is how severe this can be. Yes. This bacteria is... Well, that young man that died from falling in the other way, he did not last that long. And so it literally tore through him. And there's been a number of others, so this is why we have to be conscious of it and so on. So, again, hit us again on the... We know it enters through our opening, but the symptoms of getting the flesh-eating virus are what? So the symptoms is it's extreme pain. It's red. It's warm. And you might have a fever because your body is fighting the bacteria. If you have a fever, I think it was 101.2 or 101.3, something's going on. But that's... It's just pain that you just can't tolerate that you know something's wrong. And like I said before, don't be tarantaran about it. You got it. You know you got it. Go down and get treatment. Go to the hospital. So how do I avoid it, though? How do I avoid getting it? Because bacteria exists almost everywhere. So when you get a cut, you want to do hydrogen peroxide right away. Put ointment on it, tape it up, and you'll probably be okay. But a lot of times, then you'll know about it. But there are preventive things. For example, you want to always wash your hands. You want to wipe down surfaces, especially in hospitals. That's where a lot of the bacteria is in contract. Right. And also, if you use hand sanitizers, you want to use alcohol-based sanitizers. Those are the ones that help whatever you have. We're not doctors. We're not giving medical advice here. I always have this concern that we use too much sanitizer stuff. We've taken away our body's ability to resist things that come in. I mean, this is my uneducated opinion on it. So I'm still alive. I think how I grew up as a child is amazing. But I just think that using too much of the sanitizers can be an issue. This is my commentary. So I get the cut. I clean it. I avoid it. It's not a diagnostic, right? It will go wherever it finds an opportunity. That's correct. Back here, it's at your door. It's ringing your doorbell. But unless you open a door, it can't come in. So that's a porto in the skin. So the key to remember is that it just can't enter through your flesh. It has to have a cut and an opportunity to go in the door. Correct. So if you go through the door, then pain that, you know, comes upon you. All the things that come as a fever and all those things in a short period of time. Okay, good thing. Now we're going to jump to another one which I find kind of interesting. Leptospirosis. Did I get it right? You got it right. Let's tell us about this. This is a third bacteria in our series of bacteria. Leptospirosis is because you have animals in the mountains that have the bacteria. They're infected. They urine in the streams. And then when we have a storm, all this runoff goes into the ocean. It's kind of simple. If the water is brown, don't swim. If I'm surfing in brown water, it's not the sharks that should be afraid of. And the thing about Leptospirosis, you don't need a cut. It can enter a cut, it can enter your system that way. We have 200 cases nationwide, 50% come from Hawaii. So half, 200 cases a year? 200 cases a year and half are coming from Hawaii. And that data was about five years ago. And what makes Hawaii so much more prevalent in Hawaii? When you look at our temperatures, our humidity, we actually have a perfect condition for bacteria to grow. And then we have a lot of travelers that are coming here. They're bringing things. That's what I think. So, I have animals, or contact with animals every other week. I'm feeding the horses, apples right out of my hand. So, I haven't been running back to wash my hands after I've been feeding the animals, but maybe I should. I know it's kind of like they come down the hill and I feed them and they're slobbering all over me. So, I believe leptospirosis happens because when they urine, that's how they get it out of the system to grow. So it's not necessarily their sweat glands or something that's coming from their summer saliva. I'm not sure about that, but we're doctors. We're trying to, we're surmising here. This is John Q. Publix. This is Lapis. Yeah, we're not by anybody's so, but what does, what does it do? What does leptospirosis, I can see the word now again, what does leptospirosis do to you as opposed to MRSA and the flesh eating? So what, it'll go into your system and it's one of the slower moving ones. You can have it for two or three weeks and may not have the symptoms until it pops up later, which is, again, nauseous, fever and if it's not treated, it could attack your organs and it could shut down your organs also. So you want to, but you'll know at that point that if you're at that point, I mean you probably aren't walking, you're in pain, and you should have gone to the hospital earlier. Yeah, you've already, you've already, so this is the part that drives me crazy is that I see we have all these massive rainstorms, right, and people are walking through, you know, our systems are backing up everywhere and people are walking through this brown water on the streets and they're shorts and I'm going, surfboarding, because it's raining so hard and I'm going like, there's gotta be, this is not healthy. Yeah. It cannot be. And like I said, the thing is if there's rain out there and the water's brown, they tell everybody don't go in the water, don't go surfing in the brown water because the sharks can't see her, but there may be more to that shark than what we're thinking. Wow, so anyway, I'm going to, so what we're going to do is like, this picture is not going to make you feel all that bad, but here's kind of an example of what it could look like when you see leptospirosis. So we throw up that slide number, I think it was number 14, so it's not near as invasive looking, but you can see there's, it's working on you. Yeah, you can see that dark color in the hand, that's where the infection is starting to deteriorate the skin. It's eating away underneath. That's, when it gets to that color, you should have gone to the doctor. If that's not being taken, yeah, you should have gone, you waited too long. So we come back to the signs and symptoms, many of the signs and symptoms in this area are similar. Yes. Right? Yes. There's headache or fever, I heard you say. Nauseous. Nauseous muscle aches. You might be vomiting. Well, you could be throwing up, okay. But there's pain, there's pain. There's extreme pain. What about a jaundice kind of thing, like your eyes get yellow and things like that? Yeah, so when my wife was in the hospital, I did notice that on her, but that was at a point when they say that she may not make it. She's gone too far. These are all the kinds of things that we're seeing out there. So here we are. We've gone through all of these things. Now we'll talk about your role and our role as citizens of this state and what we should do to stop this thing. I don't think we can ever stop it, but prevent it from making to recognize it and take prevention quickly. I couldn't say that. That's why I have a coat. So what's the role? I think the role is that well, I think the need is that everybody has knows someone who was infected. But that's all they did. That's all they know. They never learned about how to recognize it, how to prevent it. And so this is what I think I'm hoping to do it back to your awareness. But like I said, I'll talk to any organization that wants to hear me. I will go there and I'll give them the handouts. They have something to take home. But our role is when we learn about it to recognize it but to share it with others because you might save a life. Now are you seeing have you come into contact with any other organizations that are taking a proactive approach in this area? You're the most proactive person I've ever met in this area. I haven't heard of anyone doing it but I know it was needed also because when I was in the hospital I see people come in with infections. So my wife had flesh eating and she survived. I wanted to start an awareness program but we had no funds. When I got infected with MRSA I said something has to be done. I made this presentation and I go around to the senior centers I talk to many federal retired organizations go to Kailua, Waikele wherever I need to go I'll go. But if you're a senior I think it's important that you understand this because you are the most vulnerable. Young kids get it, they can fight it they're strong but a lot of seniors don't have that ability so you want to make sure that you understand the symptoms and how to react. And just be on top of it. That's kind of okay so that's good actually believe it or not I didn't think we'd get through this whole show. But we did. You know your subject well. All of our guests is an autographed solo cup it's somewhere here on the far right so you get $155 in the series so you can put that on your office desk I don't want to see these being sold on eBay for Bitcoin so you know just hang on to these these are rare. One day in the year 2095 someone will find one and go that's worth at least 80 bucks. Anyway thank you so much Don I just wanted to have you on the show and people please pay attention to what we talked about today this is an important subject matter usually I tend to be very light on things that we do but when you and I talked I thought this is worth spending 30 minutes on. And I don't mind the show giving out my phone number so people can call me. Give your phone number, give it out. Okay what's the number? It's 4797528 it's my cell number. So there you go so you got the number that's going on. That's not the purpose of this. Anyway Don thanks a lot. And let him sleep at night. Yeah let him sleep at night, don't be calling him. Say how you're dead for me buddy. Pictures of you and your dad with me at some point in my early career. Anyway thanks a lot Rick pleasure having you here and like we say at the end of every show one two three How are you doing? Don't sleep without my cell.