Tag: antibiotics

Measles and Tuberculosis

The old Oak Forest Hospital is slated for demolition and site redevelopment now. At one time it was a tuberculosis sanitarium. That’s when my grandmother was a patient there. She was one of the first patients who was actually cured of tuberculosis, or TB. The drugs which killed the bacteria left her deaf.

Tuberculosis and measles are both diseases that can travel quite a long way. That’s why patients with those diseases are placed on airborne precautions. You probably know there’s currently a measles outbreak impacting 13 states as I write — probably more by morning. That’s serious, make no mistake. But Tuberculosis is also a serious and much more common problem.

Every year near the end of March is World Tuberculosis Day. Normally the CDC has a massive release of data on that day. At this time I do not know whether the CDC will release that data. My local health district has already quietly released their data, which they normally hold until World Tuberculosis Day. My state has not. It is worth noting that locally, cases are up over where they were 2 years ago (but down from last year). This data is vital to me in a professional capacity to determine how much risk my patients and staff face from TB in the community.

Believe it or not there is a vaccine for TB! It was developed a couple of decades before we had a cure. We don’t generally use it here in the United States because it’s not as effective as would be desirable, we have a relatively low prevalence, and it interferes with the cheap “skin test” you may remember having done at some point in your life. But many of our nurses from places like South Korea or the Philippines have had this vaccine.

Now about curing TB. It’s not fun. Remember from the beginning of my post that the first treatments we had often had horrible life changing side effects. However, it was better than the alternative: dying. Unfortunately TB has developed resistance to many drugs over the years. It is important to treat TB even if it’s latent — meaning it’s not causing you to be very sick right now. Treatment can often involve multiple, very strong antibiotics, every day for months. In some cases, the local health department might call every day to make sure you took it.

And this brings me to another important point. People without insurance — or with lousy insurance — might not be able to afford those antibiotics. When that happens, they are not only a walking petri dish for incubating drug resistant strains of the disease, they are sharing their germs with everyone around them.

Also, tuberculosis does not care about your immigration status.

Places where people are crowded together — like jails and immigration detention centers — are a perfect place for one TB case to turn into dozens. Are you wondering how many undocumented immigrants are going to seek medical care for their TB or measles symptoms?

The Good, the Bad, and the Habitual

Today’s question:

Do you think you have more good habits or bad habits?

I thought about going a little zen on this question and simply saying “yes.” I have good habits, I have bad habits, I don’t know that I ever bothered comparing the two. I suppose I’d like to think I have more good than bad, and there are people who might disagree.

Sorry, not the best post. But hey, yesterday you got a good rant!

In Closing: Stingray; the London Stone; Women of the Senate; with more people identifying as liberal, I wonder when politicians will stop fearing the word; climate denial; policy; and the Real Johnny Appleseed.

It’s time for Things I Learned This Semester!

That’s right, another semester is over! If you’re curious about things I’ve learned in the past, please enjoy some links to other posts. So let’s get going with the latest revelations:

General:

  • Eventually, the staff in charge of cleaning bathrooms will notice the graffiti on the back of the bathroom stall door.
  • The kind of high school student who takes college classes is motivated to succeed.
  • An alarming number of undergraduates don’t even know there’s a difference between viruses and bacteria. Come on people, take the whole run of antibiotics and never take somebody else’s meds.
  • Parking on campus gets easier after midterms.

Child Psych:

  • Because of a quirk of how children learn language, most children can relate to Ramona Beasley or Amelia Bedelia misunderstanding what they are told.
  • We adults might not like to think about it, but children are aware of sexual issues much earlier than puberty. Put CCSD’s issues in context.
  • The most messed up thing I have ever read for a class — any class — is the story of David Reimer.

Nutrition:

  • I knew that “You can’t out-train a bad diet”. I didn’t know this was mathematically provable. Go ahead and plug some numbers into a calorie calculator and an activity calculator. You can eat a lot more calories than you can possibly burn in a day!
  • The Food Pyramid is gone, and good riddance. Fill half your plate with fruits and veggies, and don’t worry too much about grains.
  • You don’t have to pay Carl Daikeler to put together a workout and diet plan for you, but it’s better than what many people would put together for themselves.
  • A lot of people apparently take Nutrition as an easy class.

Spanish:

  • In a college Spanish class, there are likely to be one or two people who speak Spanish ok but want to learn better grammar and spelling.
  • A Spanish professor from Spain and a Spanish professor from Central America have some fundamentally different ways of doing things.
  • Public speaking is more difficult in a foreign language.
  • Spanish doesn’t actually have a “past tense.” Instead, they have a “preterite” that serves the same function.
  • Don’t be afraid of the Hispanic grocery store. Odds are very good that the employees you’re likely to encounter are bilingual.

Chemistry:

  • Fun and danger in a chemistry lab often go together. It’s important to have a good lab partner and follow directions.
  • The chemical reactions that let antacids work often create gas. If you know how to do the math, you can figure out exactly how much acid you’re neutralizing and exactly how much gas you’ve burped.
  • Some guy actually built a periodic table.
  • Even though the pH scale familiar to swimming pool owners goes from 0 to 14, a pH of less than 0 is possible. This guy won a Nobel Prize for it.

That’s it for today. I’m skipping the closing bits. Have a great weekend!

Music Monday: Inspiration, Part 2

Last week I said I had two inspiring videos. This is the other one.


 

It took guts to make this video. But no, don’t go off the antibiotics until the whole run is done, ever, ok?

In Closing: gee I wonder why; some negatives??; this could be bad; “How dare researchers publish research that isn’t about what we think it should be about!”; War on Drugs is still a fail; and unemployment.

 

Coincidence

Does anybody else think it’s odd that not that long after a demonstration of how a Bad Guy could get stuff through one of those nudie-scanners, the CIA foils an airplane bomb plot using a “non metallic” bomb carried by a double agent?

Yeah, sounds like “more hyperbole… than reality” to me too.

Gotta hand it to the CIA for learning from the FBI playbook.

In Closing: but they’re organic blobs of sugar and wax!; Microbial Armageddon; be one of the lucky 10000 outside, please; more job killing in the name of free trade; warmest year on record; I wonder how long until the first death by “non-lethal” weapon; get rid of pink slime, and all of a sudden we’re whining about lost jobs. Maybe if they weren’t making something disgusting?