Skin Infection

I have had a cold for over a week and have been using my ff mask Fisher and Paykel 431 which has worked well for me. Yesterday I woke up with a bump on my forehead, right where the mask's forehead piece sits. I use the mask covered with a full liner from PAC. Today my chin is red and bumpy. I called primary care DR. she cultured the bumps and believes it is impetigo or mrsa. Yikes, how did that happen? I use distilled water, and clean things regularly (though not every day). I'm now on Bactrim. Have any of you had anything like this happen?

Wait for results of culture, then you'll know. If you wash the mask liner every few days or weekly, there should be no hygiene issues with the liner touching your skin. If you were feverish at any point during the night, there could have been heat issues/sweating going on and the sores were heat/pressure related... Or it could be cold-related; with resistance low, you may have come into contact with an irritant. But until you get definitive results from the culture you won't know for sure.

Even if your equipment is completely sterile, your skin isn't. You WILL have lots of bacteria on the surface of your skin, even if you're healthy with no infections.

If you rub your skin raw or even irritate it with something that's sterile, the bacteria on you skin and in the environment gets an extra chance to infect you.

Even MRSA usually won't infect you unless there's a break in your skin somewhere.

Of course, dirty equipment does increase the risk of infection.

Just to ease your mind, there are lots of Staph strains that are not MRSA. Impetigo is just the old-fashioned name for a staph or strep infection of the skin, and as archangle said, everybody's skin harbors lots and lots of bacteria - it's only if they can get a foothold through a break or irritation in the skin that an infection occurs. Did they say when your culture results will be back?

I once had a bout of really bad contact dermatitis with blisters and bumps, when I bought laundry detergent without realizing that I'd picked up the scented variety instead of the hypoallergenic stuff. Any chance that you might have recently changed whatever product you use to wash your mask liner? (Or could you have just not rinsed it thoroughly, since you were feeling rotten?)

It's good you are on top your symptoms and treatment.
This gives you the best chance for a speedy recovery.
People who let 'small' symptoms go until they are 'worth a trip to the doc' are more likely to have bad outcomes.
Public education about MRSA and staph infections has improved, thank goodness.