ANTI-biotic Rehab

With the cost of health insurance, health care, and medications rising every year, patients find themselves struggling to make ends meet. Without thinking twice about it, the first corners to be cut are the medical attention corners. Visits to the doctors’ office are replaced by simple phone calls to the nurse who in turn notifies the doctor of the patients’ symptoms and the result is a prescription being called in to the preferred pharmacy. We have just converted the traditional doctor’s office visit into a drive-thru consultation. We simply drive up to the menu by thinking about what symptoms we have, we place our order by diagnosing ourselves in our phone call to the nurse, and finally we pick up our order at the pharmacy drive-thru window, which just happens to be antibiotics that we will stop taking after we start feeling better. Does this really work? What about viruses, allergies, proper medication dosage directions, side effects, patient safety, dangers, and the most important of all, proper diagnosing?

The good news is that living in the drive-thru consultation world works for our schedules and lifestyles; the better news is that our antibiotic misuse works for the bacteria too! It allows the bacteria to grow stronger, to adapt, and to become resistant to our universal cure, antibiotics. We have nothing to worry about…right? Welcome to ANTI-biotic Rehab…trying to change your mind before the next strain of bacteria changes its mind.