10:09 AM CST on Thursday, February 23, 2006

By BRAD WATSON / WFAA-TV

Kimberly Jackson

Something as simple as a pedicure is said to have been the cause of Kimberly Jackson's death.

A MRSA staph bacteria that's sometimes found in nail salons is very aggressive. Usually it causes open sores that take strong antibiotics over weeks or even months to knock down.

However, in some cases MRSA can lead to death and the family of the Fort Worth woman said that's what happened in this case.

Her husband, David Jackson of Fort Worth, said he still can't believe his wife is gone, and the cause of her death only adds to the agony.

"Something so stupid like a pedicure took her life," Jackson said.

The death certificate signed by the JPS Health Center doctor who treated her showed Jackson died from a heart attack due to a staph infection on her foot that infected her blood.

"She couldn't get it healed no matter what she was doing, and the antibiotics just wouldn't stop it," Jackson said.

Jackson's family said she went to a Fort Worth salon last July for a pedicure in a whirlpool foot spa. Jackson, a paraplegic, could pull her wheelchair up to the tub according to close friend and neighbor Patricia Mathis.

"She had said she had gone to get a pedicure and that they were all sitting there talking and she looked down and the girl had the pumice stone turned on the corner edge and she pulled back and Kim saw blood," she said.

Medical records obtained by News 8 showed that over the next seven months the JPS doctor at a clinic treated Jackson for the MRSA staph infection on her foot from the cut.

MRSA is an aggressive bacteria resistant to common antibiotics and is sometimes found in the water of salon foot spas that are not disinfected properly.

The doctor put Jackson on a cocktail of strong oral and intravenous antibiotics.

"It got pretty big and she got pretty scared she was going to lose her foot," Mathis said.

But on Feb. 12 the 46-year-old woman lost her life.

At her funeral, friends and family remembered Jackson as the mother of a 17 -year-old boys, twin 13-year-old boys and the wife of a man who took care of her after she lost the use of her legs 6-years-ago.

"It's hard," Jackson said. "Nobody has a clue. I mean everybody can say, I can only imagine. It's hard...It's real hard."

The family said it knows the salon where Jackson picked up the cut, but wants to confirm it through bank records.

The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation that oversees nail salons said it will be investigating Jackson's death.

E-mail bwatson@wfaa.com