Flu Outbreak

Aychamo BanBan

Aychamo BanBan

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niss_sl said:
Don't you have guidelines that save your ass? In Canada, we are only obligated to empirically treat if it without a doubt looks like GAS throat (ie. no cough, exudates, lymphadenopathy, fever) AND there may be an issue with follow-up or testing in a remote community. Even with those 4 cardinal symptoms, you still have only 44% likelyhood of actually having GAS pharyngitis. Everything else gets a swab and if it looks like viral (rhinorrhea, congestion, cough, etc) it doesn't even deserve a swab.
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I may have exaggerated regarding being sued over missing a strep throat, I've not heard of it, but I still will practice in my patient's best interest. But check this Strep throat algorithm from the American Academy of Family Physicians (below.) What would you do with a Centor of 1-3 in a patient with poor follow up where you cannot get a Rapid strep because their insurance wont pay for it? Culture will take > 1 day, and their phone number is likely fake anyways (ie, in an emergency room.) Or, same situation, but it's Friday in the clinic and it's an extended holiday weekend. Gotta treat them. Especially if their parents are so horrible that they don't even have a doctor they take them to regularly for their kid med (preventative medicine) visits. I don't want the kid to suffer because their parents are idiots, so if I have them in the ER, or a rare office visit, I'd treat because there's no guarantee that kid will see a doctor again for any certain period of time. Now, if it's in the ER and the patient does have a PCP, and you feel they have good followup, you can just document all of that and have them follow up, etc.

I'm sure many of these scenarios don't apply to Canada because of the differences in our health care systems.
 
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niss_sl

shitlord
281
1
Well you have 10 days or so to start treatment so it'd depend on when symptoms began. Unless the guy is approaching close to 10days I wouldn't treat. Shitty irresponsible parents aren't a good reason to fuck over the next generation with antibiotic resistant bugs.
 
iannis

iannis

Musty Nester
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Wash your hands and don't touch your face. But I think what most people don't realize is how often you have to do it. I mean it's almost OCD levels of hand washing. You need to be washing your hands for 20-30s every 10-15 minutes. But it works.

Zinc is one of the few vitamins I'll take. Nothing bullshit about zinc. Just don't expect it to be more than it is, a cofactor for immune enzymes.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

Kill All the White People
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Eomer_sl said:
I know this may be hard to comprehend for someone who is so incredibly bitter
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It has nothing to do with bitter and everything to do with reality. I know you're from Canuckistan, and maybe shit's different there. That's great if it is. But you've spent enough time in the political thread over the last 10 years to know that the US is run entirely by money, top down, bottom up, corporate greed rules the fucking world here now. I'm not bitter about it in any way, shape or form, I'm just calling it like it is, and in this country, absolutely everything comes down to keeping as much money as possible in the hands of the people who already have it.

about his shitty position at the bottom of the corporate ladder,
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Yeah, I definitely should have tried a lot harder to get my family to give me a business that I could run into the ground and not turn a profit off for the last 4 years. Then I'd be happy.
 
Eomer

Eomer

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Meh, when I say "no profit" I mean we've only made about 700k in total those past 3 years, instead of 1-2 million per year which is the average. The construction market has been shit here for awhile if you're not in to heavy industrial stuff in the oil sands, everyone else we talk to in our market/industry has similar experience.

Good luck with that awesome $15/hour warehouse job, peon! Keep fighting the man and telling yourself that the reason you're nothing but a tiny cog in a huge corporate machine is because The Man is keeping you down or that you "chose" to be what you are.
 
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Timber_sl

shitlord
13
0
I normally don't get a flu shot, but my wife is due in March with our second and her doctor was pretty adamant about everyone getting one this year. So we all did and my daughter and I got the flu anyway. I get that its a crapshoot as to which virus you'll be immunized against (maybe crapshoot is a little strong, but certainly not guaranteed immunization), I'm just a little bummed that the one year I actually bother to get the shot, they guess wrong. My daughter peaked at 104 degrees and had to head to the emergency room at 3am for croup symptoms that we couldn't get under control with steam/cold air. Pretty creepy shit.

Also, while it in no way redeems the idiocy displayed throughout the thread, that was a sick burn.
 
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Maebe_sl

shitlord
67
0
Doctors! the number of times I've gone to the doctor because I feel sick, they turn me away and two days later I'm back with what I had times 3.
If they were on the ball and realized I was sick when I did I'd be been able to take a minor prescription and rest or keep working as needed. A while back I had such a run and I honestly felt I was dieing, doctor would only give me sick notes for two days duration...I felt like I'm dieing, they screw up the initial diagnosis and drag me out of what feels like my death bed every few days just so I won't lose my job....
Perhaps I'd some crazy mad disease? Nope flu turned to pneumonia due to bad advice. F'ers nearly killed me.

I changed doctor after that......then my new doctor closes and collapses their files back to the one I left (don't think that is legal tbh). Again I've to try find one who won't kill me. :/

The internet beats doctors hands down.
Need a prescription to get a brand name drug? pay 100+ for a visit to the doctors and to get your prescription? Yeah that's common sense.

The sooner as we get faster deliveries from the internet pharmacies the better. Generics and solid research = win

Technet, MSDN, man pages etc all solve problems...we just have to pick our sources online when looking at our health.
 
Aychamo BanBan

Aychamo BanBan

<Banned>
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Maebe_sl said:
Doctors! the number of times I've gone to the doctor because I feel sick, they turn me away and two days later I'm back with what I had times 3.
If they were on the ball and realized I was sick when I did I'd be been able to take a minor prescription and rest or keep working as needed. A while back I had such a run and I honestly felt I was dieing, doctor would only give me sick notes for two days duration...I felt like I'm dieing, they screw up the initial diagnosis and drag me out of what feels like my death bed every few days just so I won't lose my job....
Perhaps I'd some crazy mad disease? Nope flu turned to pneumonia due to bad advice. F'ers nearly killed me.

I changed doctor after that......then my new doctor closes and collapses their files back to the one I left (don't think that is legal tbh). Again I've to try find one who won't kill me. :/

The internet beats doctors hands down.
Need a prescription to get a brand name drug? pay 100+ for a visit to the doctors and to get your prescription? Yeah that's common sense.

The sooner as we get faster deliveries from the internet pharmacies the better. Generics and solid research = win

Technet, MSDN, man pages etc all solve problems...we just have to pick our sources online when looking at our health.
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You're probably a nightmare of a patient. "OMG I HAVE THIS PAIN, IT OCCURRED ONE TIME THREE WEEKS AGO AND LASTED 3 SECONDS. WHAT WAS IT!?!" A lot of patients just want to have something wrong with them, and will doctor shop until they are finally diagnosed with *something.*
 
Eomer

Eomer

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Need a prescription to get a brand name drug? pay 100+ for a visit to the doctors and to get your prescription? Yeah that's common sense.
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This is one thing that I think is so bizarre about the US, that people see advertisements on TV and in magazines etc for prescription drugs and then run to the doctor to ask for it. What the fuck? Why is a layman requesting a specific drug? Should be not be letting the professional diagnose his ailment and determine treatment?
 
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Blide_sl

shitlord
188
1
They market the stuff for problems that people didn't even know they had. I mean how many people would know about erectile dysfunction if it wasn't for Bob Dole and Viagra?
 
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niss_sl

shitlord
281
1
Maebe_sl said:
Doctors! the number of times I've gone to the doctor because I feel sick, they turn me away and two days later I'm back with what I had times 3.
If they were on the ball and realized I was sick when I did I'd be been able to take a minor prescription and rest or keep working as needed. A while back I had such a run and I honestly felt I was dieing, doctor would only give me sick notes for two days duration...I felt like I'm dieing, they screw up the initial diagnosis and drag me out of what feels like my death bed every few days just so I won't lose my job....
Perhaps I'd some crazy mad disease? Nope flu turned to pneumonia due to bad advice. F'ers nearly killed me.

I changed doctor after that......then my new doctor closes and collapses their files back to the one I left (don't think that is legal tbh). Again I've to try find one who won't kill me. :/

The internet beats doctors hands down.
Need a prescription to get a brand name drug? pay 100+ for a visit to the doctors and to get your prescription? Yeah that's common sense.

The sooner as we get faster deliveries from the internet pharmacies the better. Generics and solid research = win

Technet, MSDN, man pages etc all solve problems...we just have to pick our sources online when looking at our health.
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Or maybe you did just have a flu which predisposed you to pneumonia (I.e. what normally happens and your doctor was correct and you are dumber than you look).
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Niss_sl said:
The internet is basically a problem for medicine. It gives people access to information, but it gives them no tools to understand and critically analyze that information. It's made primary care a huge time-consuming pain in the ass. And really a threat to public health. I've had women at 36 weeks tell me they refused to take antibiotics for chlamydia/gonorrhea because she's heard that antibiotics are bad for the baby. Every day I run into stupid shit all attributed to internet and inherent inability to comprehend basic shit.
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aychamo_aycono_sl said:
Yup. 100%. I had a 16 year old female argue with me about her weight gain. She was obese, her mother was obese. No exercise, poor diet, etc. She was convinced she was hypothyroid, and had read up on it on some quack website, and had her little script ready for me, and after I informed her that true hypothyroidism doesn't cause *that much* weight gain, she said "See, they said you would say that on the internet."
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A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous, but I (naively) like to think that for every fat lazy bitch trying to blame her eat-more, move-less lifestyle on hypothyroidism there's at least one person who can learn how to take care of themselves better and reduce the load of medical professionals.

I know the last time I saw my primary care physician I went in for a routine checkup and to get a referral to an immunologist. The medical doctor had no idea whatOral Allergy Syndromewas and only gave me the referral when he got tired of arguing with me. Two years and a bajillion immunotherapy injections later after being treated I can eat a whole host of fruits/vegetables that I never could. He probably still thinks it's all in my head.

Problem is that people want a quick fix or just a trick/edge for their problems so if I were to start a 'layman's health website' or any kind of media I'd have better luck marketing targeted fat loss techniques over emphasizing 'move more eat less' techniques. One thing I love about this forum is that the overwhelming majority of health-related discussions are pretty close to clinically accepted facts. Sometimes when I pick up a health magazine I'm reminded of how much bullshit information there is out there.
 
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etoille

698
0
Silence_sl said:
Restless leg syndrome.

I mean, WTF.
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It sounds like bullshit. I would TOTALLY make fun of this...if I didn't have it. Mine started in HS - I didn't say anything about it because I thought everyone had it (creepy crawlies inside their legs). I was shocked it was an actual condition - first heard that it was in college and I was like "oh shit that's NOT normal?". Mines not severe enough to seek treatment but I can vouch that it sucks balls. Still remember the first attack I had. I was sitting on a bus coming back from a group trip to a water park freshman year and I was in row 16 that was the row on the back wheel and the vibrations from putting my feet on the wheel set it off.
 
Void

Void

Experiencer
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Maybe it is just the places I've worked (construction industry, so maybe the "real man" syndrome is a factor), but whenever someone takes a couple of sick days they are typically looked down upon. Personally I like to be home when I'm sick so I can sleep whenever I want, and don't really give a fuck about the risk of infecting everyone else...but if I take a couple of days for the sniffles, I'm probably going to get called a pussy and treated like I'm a lazy shit (not explicitly, but implicitly for sure). So, even if I am not the sick one, most everyone else will stay at work and I'll end up getting it guaranteed.

Not sure how that relates, but just figured I'd rant about it. Everyone ALWAYS says stay home, don't get everyone else sick...but no one ever does it, at least where I've been.
 
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etoille

698
0
Eomer_sl said:
This is one thing that I think is so bizarre about the US, that people see advertisements on TV and in magazines etc for prescription drugs and then run to the doctor to ask for it. What the fuck? Why is a layman requesting a specific drug? Should be not be letting the professional diagnose his ailment and determine treatment?
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Yeah this is my problem with the learned intermediary doctrine. In the US, the drug company basically gets shielded from liability in a lot of instances because there's this doctrine that states that the doctor is in the best position to know so unless theres a design defect with the drug or there wasn't significant disclosure of side effects etc, the drug company can't be sued.

That's great...until you start marketing your shit direct to consumers. I've ranted about this for years. If you want to advertise direct to consumers, fine. You waive the ability to be shielded then from the learned intermediary doctrine.
 
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Blide_sl

shitlord
188
1
Tuco_sl said:
A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous, but I (naively) like to think that for every fat lazy bitch trying to blame her eat-more, move-less lifestyle on hypothyroidism there's at least one person who can learn how to take care of themselves better and reduce the load of medical professionals.
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I find it interesting how the internet seems to always point to the worst case scenario first rather than the most likely.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

Kill All the White People
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Eomer_sl said:
Good luck with that awesome $15/hour warehouse job, peon! Keep fighting the man and telling yourself that the reason you're nothing but a tiny cog in a huge corporate machine is because The Man is keeping you down or that you "chose" to be what you are.
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Oh come on now, you don't mean that. You're just hurt.
 
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