There's concern of resistance taken seriously for sure, but it's not like people are making out here - I had fluclox prescribed after an online consultation in Jan (for probable cellulitis) - they don't give it out like candy, but when it's indicated...

Maybe they tried something broad spectrum here, and what was necessary (and required the sequencing to know what it actually was) was something more targeted.

It does feel like they don't hand them out as often as they used to.

I've had 4 infections this year, including an ear infection, fingernail, chest (that caused pneumonia on my son) and one that caused my left eye to swell up.

I received no antibiotics for any of them, just a suggestion that if they didn't go away they might prescribe some. They all got better without them (except my son, who ended up in emergency and was given two different ones which cleared up his infection rapidly).

In the past though I'm pretty sure I would have been prescribed them immediately.

Antibiotic resistance is a problem for society. Infection is a problem for the individual.

Modern medical ethics requires you always prioritise the individual over society, which means one should always give antibiotics if the benefits outweigh the downsides for this specific patient, even if that means you might cause antibiotic resistance for everyone else in the future.

Tell that to my urologists who put me through 4 courses of different antibiotics while 5 tests for infections were all negative…

If the symptoms are a sore throat, yes. If they're going blind, we can take a chance with antibiotics.

> Recently had an infection that necessitated broad spectrum antibiotics and magically my digestion issues have cleared up...

There are non-absorbable antibiotics designed to target intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It’s hit or miss, though.

Unfortunately for many people, taking antibiotics can have the opposite effect where it creates or worsens gut problems. It’s not an easy or reliable solution.

My family has been testing various food items and it was found:

.dressed chicken .peanuts .soyabean oil .cumin

And we used to use these food "daily".

The allergy eruptions, digestive issues went from 100 to 5 starting next day.

This is such a small thing to check but it has saved us as a lot of trouble.

Sorry for your situation, or I suppose, glad to hear it's better. My understanding as a layperson is that antibiotics can be a nightmare for the gut: I don't think it's particularly likely, but you are a lot more likely to get C. diff while taking antibiotics, and I'm sure that's not the only way it can make things worse, alongside the other caveats of antibiotics (e.g. people misusing them in ways that threatens their effectiveness.) So, I can understand why doctors are not always eager to deploy antibiotics when they're not convinced they will help.

I've personally had quite some experiences navigating health issues, health anxiety, the medical system, etc. Nothing terribly interesting, but, still. I'm actually in middle of scheduling tests to see if I might, in fact, have an autoimmune condition. If they do find evidence of that, then it will have taken me around 6 years to figure it out from my very first symptoms. Thanks to modern medical science, I have little reason to sweat over it, though. (Of course, I'm still hoping for a negative, but at least in the case of a positive I can have the relief of knowing what the hell was wrong with me all this time.)

Pretty sure antibiotics can make digestive problems worst as a side effect, so it's cool that it worked for you, but hindsight is 20 20

I just went through that exact situation.

5-6 years ago my buddy and I got violently ill on a trip to Japan. Both agreed it's the sickest either of us have ever been, and we both lost 15-20lbs each. Shortly after our illnesses went away we both developed digestion issues. Went through stool samples and colonoscopies. He got diagnosed with uc and I got diagnosed with post-infectious ibs-d. Was told all tests were fine, but life since was hell. That is up until 2 months ago when I went to the ER with an infection.

Was given 2 weeks of doxycycline and voila, I'm no longer scared to fart, not running to the bathroom after eating anything, not going 7 times a day, and having solid stools. Might be tmi but whatever this is something that I'm happy and feel incredibly relieved (no pun intended) about.

Only problem is I still have what I went to the ER for, no one knows what it is, and I have to get another colonoscopy :/

10 minutes is extremely charitable. Make it more like 2 minutes. (And we give the government over half our salary for this level of attention!)

Keep in mind that even in the excellent documentary to which you refer, about Dr Hugh "House" Laurie, MD. PhD. McT., the premise is that his setup - a dedicated diagnostics team to focus on difficult to diagnose cases - is a rare concept, not something seen at most US hospitals. There wasn't, for example, a similar team in that other great documentary "Scrubs".

I'm pretty sure that's not the reality... anywhere. That's TV.

I don't know what kind of resistance study you would order if you don't have an isolate growing. I don't know how you could have a culture growing but not know the causative organism is a Leptospira spp. .

I've started taking supplements to see if I can help the problem. Basically I'm now adding and removing a bit of everything that can help with or make the problem worse, but I'm only a day or three into that.

I'll check out the ones you mention.

Yeah I got some reading/computer glasses and today installed a monitor arm so I can more easily control the distance, no luck with it as of yet.

The article literally says that all tests for infection came back negative. It is not said explicitly, but this heavily implies that she had negative cultures (not uncommon for leptospirosis) and did not present with things like elevated white counts (also not uncommon for this pathogen - especially for superficial infections). The article also clearly says they (mis-)diagnosed it as autoimmune disease and treated with steroids, which is pretty much the worst thing you can do in that case. Leptospirosis goes away most of the time without any treatment if you have a working immune system. So if you really need a contrarian takeaway from this editorial, it's that doctors are still sometimes more dangerous than diseases (which used to be true in general up until about 100 or so years ago).