*frustration*

[danaeris]

I've been trying to call the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, and they still have this message which says they are closed in observance of the federal holiday... but there's no federal holiday right now!

There is another free SF clinic at 11th and California which I can try calling. Hopefully they have an appointment soon, but I can't call to find out until 1 p.m., when they start accepting appointments. *crosses fingers* I wonder if I could somehow con/convince the City Clinic into giving me the right antibiotics for this?

I'm tired of this cold. It needs to go away now...

Comments

[coffeekitty.livejournal.com]

while i'm sure that i'm the umpteenth person to say this...if it's viral and you take antibiotics, all you're doing is killing the good resident bacteria that keep nastier ones from scrounging a toehold, and developing a population of antibiotic-resistant resident bugs that will wait till the most inconvenient possible moment and then give you a UTI that won't respond to the first three or four antibiotics they throw at it...

[auros]

Yeah, earlier I vaguely considered leaving a link to this. The American Academy of Family Physicians says:

Overdiagnosis of acute bacterial rhinosinusitis is not surprising because specific clinical features that distinguish it from nonbacterial upper respiratory tract infection are lacking. Often, patients and physicians believe that antibiotics are necessary because symptoms have gone on for too long, but duration of illness does not reliably distinguish between viral and bacterial infections. . . . Even though antibiotics are statistically more effective than placebo in reducing or eliminating symptoms at 10 and 14 days, the degree of benefit is relatively small.

OTOH, it sounds like Dana's getting close to that 14 day mark where they start thinking the symptoms are persistent enough to at least merit having a doctor look at it and maybe prescribe some bug-poison.

[coffeekitty.livejournal.com]

i'll definitely agree that it never hurts to get a dr. to check one over when you feel like you just can't shake some bug. i've just got a bit of a soapbox going over badgering doctors into handing out antibiotics 'cause i've taken enough to have ended up harbouring some exasperatingly antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and having periodic painful drug-resistant infections ain't gonna positively contribute to quality of life for my friends.