What should I know about gardening with regard to infection?

What should I know about gardening with regard to infection?

I actually have some patients, real avid rose gardeners, and I'm at UC Davis up in California, Northern California, huge agricultural area. Lots of us are really into being in our backyards with our plants. Again, bigger issue around stem cell transplant time when we've really ablated the marrow and patients have no immune system for a little while, that's when I really don't want people digging in the dirt. I really don't want them getting scratches from their rose bushes because that's a great source for bacterial infection, unfortunately, and in our most susceptible patients, that's a problem.

But again, just like with emotional support animals and our pets, right? They’re kind of part of our families. Being in the garden is a huge part of a lot of our patients lives and it's a really important part of their emotional well-being to be out there in the sun doing the work. When you're on general, just maintenance therapy, not a problem. Keep going and get in your garden. Maybe you need a little bit of help digging the big holes and that's okay. But absolutely, being out there, getting your vegetables growing and getting the flowers growing is super important and I think it's actually something that we shouldn't be too worried about as long as people are smart.

And if you do get a cut or a scrape, if you do have any, especially around the fingertips and the nail beds, which can kind of hide scrapes, I think really easily, making sure that those are really nice and clean, good hand hygiene, hand washing after being out in the garden. And then any scrape that you get, really making sure that gets cleaned out well, with just running water and good soap and water afterwards to make sure that there's no areas where bacteria could be getting across that barrier of your skin.