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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Sweating it out in the ER waiting room sucks versus sweating it out in bed at home. Of course, it depends on how sick you are, and if you ask your doctor they will always err on the side of caution.

...and an IV drip usually doesn't help that much, and its not good to have too many of those.

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An IV drip can mean the difference between life and death by dehydration. Seriously, it's why doctors tell you to go to the ER if you can't keep any liquids down when you have food poisoning or the flu. Couple that with the fluid loss you're already experiencing from being sick, and it can turn deadly fast. Not to be rude, but you have to be completely ignorant to say, "an IV drip usually doesn't help that much." Unless you're talking about someone who isn't dehydrated in the first place, in which case I'd agree, but most ERs don't hook someone up to an IV for shits; if you're getting a bag, you're probably dehydrated. (They don't want to waste their bags, IVs, nurses' time, and risk infection on someone who doesn't need it.)

Even if you have a healthy immune system, if you're delirious from a fever, you should call your doctor ASAP.

Note: I'm not a doctor, this is not medical advice, yadda yadda. I've just been living with Crohn's disease long enough to learn some of this from my own visits to the ER.

Most ERs in china will hook you up to an IV drip by default without even a doctor's consultation first. And ya, it sucks.

But really, why do you think flu is so deadly? If you are very young, very old, or have other medical conditions, fine, it makes sense to hit the ER. If you are a healthy adult and just got hit with a bad one/two day flu, you are able to keep your fluids in (beyond sweating them out), you don't need to hit the ER even if you feel like crap... By delirious, I'm talking about shady gradients anyways, I've never had more than sweating dreams where nothing makes sense. Ya, there is a point where you should go the ER, but our thresholds are fairly diverse.

At least a few thousand people die from the flu each year.[0] I've just been responding to your original post. You said "delirious", which is an actual, serious medical condition associated with high fever and dehydration.[1] Then you told people to "sweat it out", which is a myth.[2] I'm just trying to correct some of these misconceptions so someone doesn't read it and think that being delirious is completely normal and you should try to lose even more fluids.

[0]: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.h...

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium

[2]: http://www.insweb.com/health-insurance/5-common-flu-season-h...

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