I am alive because of antibiotics.

15th February 2012

I am alive because of antibiotics.

I get really frustrated with people in the pagan/new Age/other woo-woo communities who bitch and moan about how horrible Western medicine is because of various reasons. There are problems with health care, yes, and pharmaceutical companies overcharging and undertesting at times.

But less than two years ago I was in a hospital in horrible pain with a life-threatening intestinal perforation, with lower-GI bacteria flooding my abdominal cavity and putting the internal organs at serious risk of infection leading to rapid shutdown and death. Had I not stayed there 48 hours on IV antibiotics, and had they not sent me home with two weeks’ worth of oral antibiotics, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.

And that’s just the most recent experience in which my life and health were preserved by Western medicine. I could be deaf from ear infections, blind from poison ivy in my eye, dead from asthma, or neurologically impaired from dental infections that spread to the brain. Instead, due to antibiotics, steroids, antihistamines, inhalers, dental scaling and cavity fillings, I am alive and in pretty damn good health all told.

Sure, there’s clove oil for toothaches, but it won’t stop an infection in the root. And yogurt is good for your digestive system, but it won’t cure stomach cancer. I use nasal irrigation when I have a cold to flush out mucous, but if my sinuses end up infected and it looks like it won’t clear out on its own, I get antibiotics.

So there you have it. Another shaman/pagan/etc. in favor of doctors with good bedside manners, hospitals with big, sunny windows, and antibiotics that may temporarily throw my system into imbalance, but will at least leave me alive to recover from that.

Tagged: pagan medicine healing health neopagan shamanism not dying is good for me