Thursday, January 29, 2015

azithromycin - huh?

Last week, on Friday, I began to feel slightly unwell with a low grade fever, low level headache and a general achiness. Things progressed on Saturday where you can replace 'low' with 'medium' as we celebrated V-8's sixth birthday, and then on Sunday I was pretty much incapacitated, taking ibuprofen four times a day trying to keep things under control and not succeeding. Thinking it is viral I called in sick on Monday, and then on Tuesday morning I went to the Brunswick Medical Center just up the road from where I live as I wasn't getting any better. I arrived there at 7:24AM and was in a queue with about 20 people ahead of me. We were not triaged as we came in as this is not an 'urgency' center, we were simply registered and we would be seen in the order that we are registered. At 10:20 I was called in and the doctor found that I have a throat infection. She prescribed azithromycin; a drug I had not heard of until I received it from the pharmacist as the doctor's prescription writing was not legible to me.

I've read user reviews of this drug and found that many people had very difficult side effects in taking it. It occurs to me now, though, that it could be that mostly it is the people who had a bad experience that would review it, if it worked as expected and did away with whatever infection it was treating, would one think to review it?

I have not had any of the side effects; I took two 250mg doses on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, I will take one later today, and then one again on Friday and Saturday. So two on the first day and one each on days two to five. The drug apparently stays in my system attacking the infection long after the last dose is consumed.

I think this morning I am finally starting to turn the corner a little bit, though my head does still feel a little fragile; if I turn too quickly my head hurts.

How are you doing?

3 comments:

Zhoen said...

Z-packs, we used to call 'em. Wonderful stuff.

Most personally useful bit of info from nursing school. If the snot is clear or white, that's normal to allergic. If yellow, it's viral. If it goes green, it's bacterial, go get antibiotics.

Debstar said...

Hope you're feeling much better now,Phil. I'm feeling very healthy at the moment. Thanks for asking.

Phil Plasma said...

Z: that snot-color pattern sounds pretty useful, thanks for the tip.

D: I'm mostly better now, still a ways to go but I had enough energy to come to work.