I was reading an article recently about a guy who collects deer ticks to study and try to find a cure for Lyme Disease. Or maybe it was a radio program. Anyway, the one thing that stood out to me was that where he was, 60% of all deer ticks carry the disease. Which is amazing to me. That's huge. 60%!

Lyme disease is just a spirochete bacteria, there's an antibiotic that deals with it.

Yeah, my friend got it only a couple years after the disease was identified, and it wasn't well known then, so she wasn't diagnosed for a while. She had to get intravenous antibiotics for her spine over several months to take care of it.

Nasty business.

It's moved to dog ticks too. The problem here is, it's very difficult to get a positive test for Lyme. Without a positive test doctors are only allowed to give IV antibiotics for a short time, too short a time, because the government's trying to cut down on overuse of antibiotics.

The tick I took off of spencers groin when he was 3 or 4 was a deer ti ick. Thats the one where I discovered that they let go immediately when you put anbesol on them.

It was holding on so tight, and it was so tiny...and he was losing his shit. I put it on there to numb him, and it just let go. I didn't think of it vomiting bacteria. He didn't get lymes, though, so...win. I'll use that again.

see also
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Completely extraneous story just to bring in John Barrowman.
His husband is addicted to searching the internet if he feels any symptoms of illness.
He decided one night he had Lymes diease because of his aching muscles.

JB called his sister who lives in the US to get a first hand idea of how this disease really represents. She made it clear the first thing to do was check Scott's whole body for ticks, especially the scrotum. One way or another they managed to fall asleep after this search was conducted.

In the morning Scott admitted he was probably just not as fit as he thought he was. He'd done an assault course with some handsome young soldiers the day before and the unexpected aching was more to do with trying to impress them than any ticks.

The above story is lifted from JB's autobiography, not something he just happened to mention to me when we were down the pub.

It's good the government is focusing on this issue, but I'd much rather see antibiotics outlawed for use on animals. Save the medicine for the humans.

If my (as-yet-unborn) grandchildren die of pneumonia because Purdue currently packs chickens in so closely that it has to give them antibiotics to keep them from getting sick, then I think our priorities are messed up.

Stop buying Purdue chickens ... it's a good plan! Agribusiness treats living animals in a way that's sickening, in every possible connotation of the word. Overuse of antibiotics in agribusiness livestock raising is one cause of antibiotic resistance; however, overuse in humans is another.

Basically, bugs mutate faster than we can keep up. At my local academic medical center, residents are forbidden to use Cipro without the permission of the Infectious Disease department because resistance to Cipro is exploding. It'd be nice to still be able to use that med in a couple years.

One of the hardest things for a doc in an office is persuading patients they DON'T need an antibiotic. If they don't get it, they go to the next Urgent Care or ER, where some beaten-down PA will give them what they want. Then they make a formal complaint to the first office/ER/Urgent Care about how they didn't get what they 'needed', and the first doc, who was right in not prescribing, catches crap. Or gets fired. So eventually all the providers get beaten down and just write the scripts, because that's the object of the visit and everyone knows how the game goes.

I wish the attitude here were more like that in Europe, where apparently doctors have to argue patients into taking antibiotics.

Not to mention the GPs make mad coin

Which is a sure-fire way to breed antibiotic resistant bugs. The vulnerable bugs die, the semi-resistant bugs survive to make the next generation.

:smack:

Over-prescribing is bad, but an incomplete course is at least as bad.

I'd just like to remind you two doubters that it has been declared by an appropriate expert, that "Zen knows balls when he sees them."

I am an EXPERT balls-recognizer. And that latest photo is not balls.

lol...ok then. If it means that much to you, it's not balls. :)

When I worked in an Urgent Care in the late 80's (and health care coverage was REAL and their co=pay was anything from zero to ten bucks to see the doc) we'd get these soccer mom's who would bring their kids in for the tiniest little thing like a superficial abrasion and practically threaten a lawsuit if we didn't Rx an antibiotic. It was almost like a competition: Only the Best Mom's have their kiddies on Antibiotics Nearly Constantly.

it was fucking ridiculous.

Then we'd have the 65 year old who looked 110 who fell at home and got glass in her nasty, unwashed for 10 days hair and yours truly would get to pick the glass-and whatever else was in there-out of her hair so the doc could suture her up.

why didn't I quit much, much sooner??????