I've been fighting off a nasty, nasty, nasty sinus infection. I'm basically sicker than I've been since I was in my 20s. In fact, of the times I can remember being sicker than this, twice, I ended up being hospitalized.
How did things go this far? Oh, it's an interesting little story. My son came down with a cold, and while we were at Disney, he went mega-boogery. Seemed to me he had a sinus infection.
In the old days, when we had thick, green mucus, we went to the doctor to get antibiotics and we got well.
Now, the prevailing wisdom is that green mucus doesn't necessarily mean a sinus infection. So, as I was reading on the internet trying to figure out whether to trade a half-day at Disney for a half-day at some medical clinic to get Logan some meds, I decided to wait and let things run their course before going and getting antibiotics.
Now, I do think that antibiotics are overprescribed. People get them for common colds, and doing so just makes the bacteria we have that much more difficult to cure. Ultimately, it's how we get antibiotic-resistant strep and other bad, bad things.
In the past, I figured I knew the difference between a sinus infection and a cold. However, that was based on the thick green mucus diagnosis.
Logan would get better, then worse, then we'd pick up some OTC drugs and he'd get better. On the flight home, his ear started hurting terribly, and he complained that it had shut completely and he couldn't hear out of it.
So, on the way home from the airport, we stopped by the ER, which was the only thing open, to have them look at him. He had two infected ears as well as his infected sinuses. They gave antibiotics. He got better almost immediately. 2 days later, he was doing just fine and halfway through the course of his antibiotics, he was 100%.
Me? I had similar symptoms, and halfway through the day on Friday, the telltale green mucus showed up. I should have figured I had the same thing as Logan and gone to the doctor immediately. However, I wondered if there might be something to the new common wisdom and decided to wait and make sure it wasn't a common cold.
It wasn't. By Saturday night, I was sicker than I've been in a long, long time. I threw in the towel when not only had both ears started to close, but mucus started coming out of my eyes. Went to the ER at 2 in the morning, came home with a scrip.
Now, in hindsight, it is clear to me that I should have followed my instinct in both cases. Stuck to what has worked for me my entire life, and gotten scrips at the first sign of the green mucus trouble.
Sorry, but the new prevailing wisdom is wrong.
Which brings me to a couple of problems. Granted, I did this in the most cost-ineffective way by going to the ER, but that was pretty much my only option at the hours I needed care. Why couldn't I just get antibiotics on my own?
The answer, obviously, is that doctors want to control access to antibiotics to prevent superbugs from developing. And that, I'm afraid, is probably why they came out with this new "prevailing wisdom" on green mucus.
People, by and large, are pretty stupid, and left to their own devices, some things you'd probably take for granted, like the ability to determine if mucus is thick and green, is something a suprising amount of the population will screw up given the chance.
The only reasonable explanation I've seen for abandoning the thick green mucus diagnosis is that sometimes mucus can sit in your sinuses for a while before you expel it. So, even with a common cold, you might blow out thick green mucus first thing in the morning.
However, if that's not it, and you're consistently and constantly blowing out thick green mucus, it's an infection.
So, from now on, screw 'em. They don't know what they're talking about on this. If it's thick green mucus, it's a danged sinus infection. If I'd just stuck with what I already knew, I wouldn't be as miserable as I am now (3 days after getting the scrip) and my son wouldn't have been in excruciating pain on the flight.
It goes without saying that I'm not a doctor, and that this should not be considered qualified medical advice. I'm just saying that the next time I'm blowing frogs out my nose all day, I'm going to the doc, and if I don't walk out with a scrip, the doc is going to have a fight on his/her hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment