This is awesome. We underestimate how much antibiotics have made our lives so much better. I hope they make billions in profits.
https://www.ft.com/content/4da1c6e4-603d-11e9-9300-0becfc937...
The doctor called saying the tests were negative and we wanted to test to see if it was viral instead. Nothing came back. Then, he wanted to test to see if it was STD, but the tests take longer to come back. While waiting for results and continuing to take penicillin per my doctor's directions, I continue to get sicker. The infection had moved from my throat to my gums, then to my lips, then to a couple of fingers (that I accidentally slammed between a door) and my genitals.
At this point, the doctor is convinced I have an STD because it's on my genitalia despite insisting that it started in my throat. He said it could've been transmitted orally. He runs every STD test under the sun, although he sent the samples in for the wrong tests the first time, and everything comes back negative. Since they all come back negative, he is convinced I have HIV considering how quickly it spread. He orders that test.
A few days later while bedridden and during finals week, I get a call from a new doctor saying the HIV test came back negative and to come in so she could examine me herself. Considering how sick I was and for how long, she said that I clearly should have been hospitalized, despite the previous doctor that I saw nearly everyday and saw how long I had a fever for (2 weeks straight) kept telling me to just get rest. She also said that he never tested for strep throat, despite me insisting that's what I thought it was on the first visit.
The new doctor says that she thinks it's strep throat too (which the previous doctor ruled out without testing) and she runs as many tests against it as possible. Turns out that I had antibiotic-resistant strep throat that became resistant due to the penicillin that the previous doctor was so quick to prescribe to "get a head start". It turns out that the doctor had been fired and she was his replacement...for good reason.
Anyways, antibiotic-resistant infections are no joke. They get real bad, real quick. Plus, a shitty doctor can create it by prescribing medication nilly willy and force a potential HIV scare that you have to deal with for like a week. Those three weeks were the worst of my life, not just because of how sick I was, but also because I was convinced (since the doctor was) that I had HIV, forced to confront the person I assumed I contracted it from, and go through the worst pain in my life every time I had to take a piss.
Furthermore, penicillin is only suggested for group A strep, which has already been declining in effectiveness since the 80s. It also shouldn't be given simply as a precaution until you know what bacteria you're dealing with. It was probably already a resistant strain of strep, but the way the following doctor explained it to me was that by introducing the penicillin, it made it more resistant to other antibiotics that I should've taken instead. The only course of action I had was to wait it out. She said she could have tried other antiobiotics, but there was no way to tell if it would work. Luckily, I was already recovering by the time we got the results back for strep throat.
P.S. The person I contracted the strep throat from was fine after about a week of clindamycin.
EDIT: I’m no doctor myself. I’m just going based on what I was told. If the second doctor gave me bad information, then I’ll be happy to assume that both were shitty doctors. That wasn’t the only time I had horrible experiences with that clinic (completely forgot to document multiple doctor’s visits and weeks of PT I had in relation to a sports injury and I lost my redshirt eligibility as a result as there was no proof of the injury). That clinic was the only option I had with student-athlete health insurance. But, I’m not changing my mind on the first doctor after everything else, regardless of the penicillin.
I mainly blame the doctor for not testing for strep
In some cases resistance is so widespread that they skip the weakest and just right to the stronger antibiotics.
The use of antibiotics is actually very institution specific. Hospital usually have antibiotic protocols - the tests that should be run and what drugs are used 1st line, 2nd line, etc.
Antibiotic resistance can be really high at one hospital and really low at another hospital down the street.
(which the previous doctor ruled out without testing)
Then in your second paragraph, you wrote that they tested for viruses, which is generally unheard of for respiratory viruses.
As an introvert and someone with Social Anxiety Disorder, I don't say much (hence my username) and I don't ask too many questions in person. This was also before I got treatment for major depressive disorder and SAD, so I spoke even less then. But, I was at least concerned enough to request he test for strep and to try to insist that I thought it was strep I got from someone else too, which was quickly diminished into disregard each time I tried. I pretty much kept my mouth shut after out of embarrassment. In the beginning things felt questionable, like the staph test (like why staph?), but I stopped questioning after I felt embarrassed. It wasn't until the second doctor that I questioned everything else he did, including the viral tests.
It was a bad experience I had and I'm salty about it. I may be putting blame or wrongdoing where I shouldn't due to said saltiness. A lot of the things he said and did were questionable though and I blame him in the least for making every visit and those 3 weeks as difficult as possible for me, when I feel there were at least some better options he could have chosen and the second doctor confirmed that to me.
No. We shouldn't be wasting resources on developing new antibiotics, because their effectiveness will be relatively short lived. We should focus on alternative sources, such as plants found in rainforests that are rapidly disappearing.
And short term value is still…value.
Gotcha.
You're heading down an unwinnable path with antibiotics, and creating new superbugs. You're running out of time to discover a real fix, because rainforests are rapidly disappearing. So yeah, the analogy is apt.