A recent study says the number of drug-resistant staph infections is up dramatically.

More than 90,000 Americans are infected each year by the superbug, so much so that staph deaths are exceeding those caused by AIDS. 

But there is a bright side to this story. One toddler contracted the disease and survived, but his fight was a hard one.

You’ve heard it since you were little Nolan’s age – “Wash your hands!”

Nolan hears it more often now.

Even a mom’s simple tasks now are a blessing.

“At first it was just a temperature that we saw,” mother Vivian Harrold said. “It wasn’t until two days later that we saw another symptom.”

Then another and another, until finally a blood test would confirm the worst: MRSA: Antibiotic resistant staph.

“All of a sudden there were 30 people in his room, 30 scared nurses and doctors, and so many big words tossed around us,” Harrold said. “Our heads were spinning, just trying to catch up.”

By then Nolan was in a drug-induced coma, fighting for his life.

“They had done one little test on his heart and the next day first thing in the morning they were telling us they would have to do heart surgery immediately," his mother said.

One of the ways it is resistant is the staph goes to places where blood does not flow, like the sac that protects the heart.

In Nolan, the staph was everywhere.

“They found it underneath his knees and they had to go in with needles and suck the fluid out from underneath his kneecap," Harrold said.

He would be at Texas Children’s Hospital for more than six weeks.

Five years ago, MRSA was generally a health care related disease confined to people in care facilities – but not anymore.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, now 14 percent of cases have nothing to do with health care, and that number is rising rapidly.

Look no farther than little Nolan.

There is no way to predict where the staph might come from, and that’s why now

even a little outside play time means more time somewhere else, better back to the sink than back to the hospital.

In most areas the number of deadly MRSA cases has doubled in the last five years.

But it is not just staph; medical experts are noticing a large number of diseases that are developing resistance to antibiotics.