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