on going infection:

Repo Man said:
You think unemployed people who have to resort to living with relatives to stay off the street would fair better under the US system?
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Yeah. My wife worked in a public hospital for most of her life. Many of them are teaching hospitals so they have all the best and latest of everything. They did some astounding diagnoses. I think the indigent get better medical care in the USA than hard-working taxpayers get in England.

Every country has bad doctors but in the USA it's a little easier to go find a better one.
 
LA as joepistole said it isnt just in hospitals anymore. It IS more common amoung hospital pts and ESPECIALLY nursing home pts, residentual living acomidation (as the pt i was talking about) ect but the thing is so bloody contagious that anyone could have it by now. Its one disease that gives me the creeps, but then not as much as necrotising infacitise (I have nightmares about THIS one:p)

Oh and fore the person who asked what MRSA is its also called "Golden staph"
Its a multiple drug resistant strain of staph
 
aureus = golden
in latin, and you know all the medical and biology folks still like to use latin


And necrotizing fasciitis is a pretty scary disease. In Latin it means killing the fascia. Fascia is the soft tissue portion of connective tissue. It is all over your body. This disease literally eats you up in small pieces. I can certianly understand why it would creep out anyone!
 
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Ok (i never realised that actually) but its commonly called golden staph here in the media (its only health care workers who call it MRSA) have also herd it called Multiple Drug Resistant Staph MDRS:p
 
To be technically correct one should use MRSA or the full name as there are non resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
Yeah. My wife worked in a public hospital for most of her life. Many of them are teaching hospitals so they have all the best and latest of everything. They did some astounding diagnoses. I think the indigent get better medical care in the USA than hard-working taxpayers get in England.

Every country has bad doctors but in the USA it's a little easier to go find a better one.
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As I've posted before, I was struck ill with Grave's disease in 1995. I was working part time at a gas station (all of the hours I could get though), and I put off going to the doctor because I was so broke (insurance? No). When I finally went in, I had lost about twenty to thirty pounds (down to 160 at 6'3"). My heart was racing, I couldn't sleep. I had the highest thyroid level they had ever seen. I was close to having a thyroid storm, which can be fatal.

I was too sick to work, and filed for Medical and disability. I was "lucky" enough to not have anything of value. So I didn't have to sell anything. But the disability baseline period was based on the prior year, and I had only worked part time. Even though I lived in a dump, and did as little as possible, I was coming up short. My mother had to send me some money, and I racked up credit card debt buying groceries and other necessities such as gas for my car. It took me years to pay off the debt that created. I looked like a hippy because I didn't want to waste money for a haircut.

The doctors kept taking biopsies trying to determine if I had thyroid cancer, or Grave's. I was on high blood pressure medication, and a medication to lower my thyroid level. After a couple of months, I was feeling much better, and I was declared well enough to work again. I worked two part time jobs, and then got a semi decent job (woo hoo, $6.50 an hour) that had benefits.

Now I was making too much money to qualify for Medical, but I had to wait for the six month period to pass before the medical insurance coverage began. I still had very little money, so I tried to tough it out. The trouble is, the drug I was taking to lower my thyroid level was now lowering it too much. After a couple of months, I began to really feel tired all of the time. It was now winter, and I didn't have the money to heat my apartment. I didn't have a bed, only a foam rubber pad on the floor. As my thyroid level continued to go below normal, I was cold all of the time. I used every blanket in the house, to the point where they were actually heavy on top of me. I was still cold. I was chugging coffee and colas just to get through the day. It finally got to the point where I couldn't think straight, and my boss began to suspect I was on drugs. Though I felt terrible, I just kept going to work because I needed the job so badly. I finally had to just go and get my thyroid level checked (more credit card debt). I now had the lowest thyroid level they had ever seen. They temporarily took me off the thyroid lowering medication, and put me on synthroid to jump start my thyroid level.

As icing on the cake, I had a tooth abscess about this time. I had been putting off going to the dentist because of how broke I was. I'd lost a crown, and knew I needed it replaced. But when it went to the nerve, there was no putting it off. Getting a root canal and crown cost me another $800.00 on the credit card.

I made it to spring; I now had insurance, and after jabbing quite a few long needles into my neck, my oncologist was satisfied that I did not have cancer. I was given the green light to take a dose of iodine 131 to kill my thyroid.

I find it hard to believe that anyone in Britain or Canada would trade places with me for that ordeal.

To those where there is a national health service - does this sound like a good way to run a healthcare system to you?
 
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