Antibiotics: The “Do’s” “DO take all of your medication. Continue taking your antibiotic even when you feel better. If you don’t finish the prescription, you may not kill all the bacteria and you may get sick again. The bacteria still alive can then become resistant, worsening the infection you already have, and making it harder to treat.”

You know, since I’ve rarely if ever finished a full course of antibiotics, I may personally be responsible for the mutation of certain bacteria.

Dire news, indeed.

When I mentioned last week that I might see a Western doctor for meds, a few of my friends made quiet little tsk-tsk sounds and started telling me which herbs to take.

I’ve been pondering antibiotics. I used to be against them, like any other good vegetarian hippie Hindu girl. But I’ve had this freaking illness for nearly two weeks now and I want to feel better – and those little pills are doing it for me.

I once lived in a “my body is divinely intelligent” phase, and I went through an herbs-will-fix-anything phase. [They won’t. If I get hit by a bus, I don’t want arnica. I want pharmacutical-grade pain killers and surgery and a freakin’ IV drip, if that’s what it takes to put me back together.]

I was once truly and honestly in a headspace where I didn’t even particularly suffer when I had strep throat – my feeling was that it was perfectly okay for me to be that sick at that time. The pain was something I witnessed rather than suffered, the fever was almost pleasurable, and I fasted and meditated and stayed hydrated and slept a great deal. It was really intimate and empowering. It was about trust and faith, and not fear. I’m really honored and glad that I had that experience.

But that spiritual/mental space is not my experience, outlook, nor belief at this point in my life. It occurs to me that treatment of disease is as personal as diet or religion – just because I was once anti-antibiotic doesn’t mean I was imperically right.

In the real world, bacteria spread. It can be proven and demonstrated. People who are not in a high self-referreal self-healing space absolutely do require antibiotics – that’s the vast majority of any population at any time.

Consider this: compared to a horrible death, most of the side effects caused by modern antibiotics are trivial. We’re blessed in the West to even be able to ponder the ethical uses of antibiotics, or to live such soft lives that we can be outraged by the occasional side-effects of antibiotics, side-effects which are in truth problematic more than literally dangerous.

Instead of being grateful we’ve survived an illness, we’re pissed off that we’ve got the runs.

If we were suddenly transported to Europe in 1633, right smack dab in the path of a bunch of killing bacteria, we’d literally be dying for antibiotics, particularly for the children.

I am also pondering the so-called “health nut’s” idea of health. Has it ever really existed? Was there really some ultra-healthy past where everyone ate clean food and drank herbal teas?

Or is it a completely non-historical fantasy that we just recently got enough leisure time to make up?

When I think of the glorious past, I think mostly of plagues, of leeches, of people dying from treatable “evil humors” like diabetes or liver disease. I think of those last few weeks before the new garden starts bearing and you’re eating dried salted meat and 8-month-old mealy apples and nothing else for weeks on end. Malnutrition. Scurvy. Parasites.

Alternative sources always speak glowingly of the wonderful past, when human kind was in balance with nature and enjoyed luminous health… It’s a wonderful notion, and I do believe that we were healthier when we worked when the sun was up and breathed fewer toxic emissions and slept when the sun was down. But as much as I fear the long-term effects of our unchecked population growth, I do not make the illogical leap that the millions of lives saved by vaccines and antibiotics would have been better lost.

When you read alternative health information, it always talks about diet and the horrible evils caused by misapplied Western medicine like antibiotics. There are always case studies of individuals who went to a Western doctor for something, were misdiagnosed or over-medicated, suffered horribly debilitating pain for years, then found some herbalist/chiropractor/massage therapist/whatever who got them off meat/dairy/sugar/wheat/gluten/whatever and put them on this supplement or that mineral, this cleanse or that macrobiotic diet, and TA-DA!: the client is suddenly healthy for the first time in his life.

Except that he’s on a strict dietary regimen and everything falls apart 24 hours after he stops taking all his supplements, and there’s no such thing as a “natural” diet unless you’re one of the 1500 people worldwide who are living in yurts and walking fifteen miles a day harvesting fiddleheads and mushrooms.

While I wouldn’t argue that our diets suck and that the Western “health care” system is an utter disgrace, I have to wonder if these supplements and severe lifestyle changes aren’t actually less responsible for improved health than the decision to “do something,” and the feeling of empowerment that alternative approaches offer.

While feeling empowered and self-referral is great for the individual, it’s simply not a viable approach across whole populations. Some people will not perceive any benefits from a cleanse or diet or supplement. They will get and stay sick with this year’s germ until they take some damned antibiotics.

Antibiotics do cause life-threatening reactions in some people, and while I’m not callous enough to say I don’t care when a child dies from such a reaction, I am realistic enough to say that it’s better in my opinion to lose a few children than to lose millions of people to a rampant disease.

I don’t want the world to be as full as it is, but I know I could never choose to remove any sentient being from it. Given a choice, I would always choose to save lives, and I believe that for all their faults, modern medicines have done and continue to save lives that would otherwise be lost.

Consider vaccinations. The only reason we in this country can get away with not vaccinating our children is because everyone else does vaccinate: smallpox is dead because of vaccinations: your kid can’t catch it because it doesn’t exist any more to catch.

Before vaccinations, people died horrible painful deaths from smallpox. Mothers who had seen it in action rushed to have their children vaccinated. [Which puts me in mind of pain relief in the birthing room: I’ve read on many midwifery websites that men “forced” pain relief on women, but I believe the opposite is true. When women learned of nitrous oxide, diethyl ether, and chloroform, and that these chemicals could save them the pain of labor, some of them demanded it – just as some women today demand epidurals. I believe most men, even doctors, would choose what they thought was a low risk of complications over forcing a woman to suffer when he had something that would ease it.]

It’s my belief that in the U.S., non-vaccinated kids don’t get mumps and measles and all that other crap because everyone else at school is vaccinated, not because they eat tofu and leafy greens and organic peanut butter. When that non-vaccinated child grows up and decides to travel to another country, boy howdy is his or her immune system going to be freaked out when it meets some actual germs.

Apparently, the U.S. has fewer germs than much of the rest of the world – I don’t argue that we haven’t gone overboard with our sanitation: look at what it costs us in Montezuma’s Revenge every year! Some of our immune systems are so unaccustomed to germs that we’re capable of dying when introduced to Mexico’s squirmy germies. We’re weak due to our obsession with sanitation, I realize this – but if it were me, or anyone I know, I’d rather they get antibiotics than die.

Please note that I don’t argue with anyone who chooses not to vaccinate, knowing as I do that every child is precious – and statistically, some children will die from vaccinations. Period. But I’m also grateful that none of the little cute short people I know and love have died from smallpox or rubella – only a few generations ago, everyone knew a child or two who had died of disease.

I know there are books out there claiming that vaccinations are all a hoax and “that inoculations have had very little, if any, influence on the history of these illnesses,” but I’m not certain I believe them. 2,000 years ago, the Chinese were powdering scabs from people who had survived the pox and snorting it to vaccinate others against the disease.

And now, at the end of my second day on antibiotics, I feel that I am no longer getting sicker, which can only mean that the getting better part is afoot. Such is my truth, here and now.
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