skin deep supression
It's been a shade frantic around here since we found what we thought was impetigo on Fionn's legs. Amidst his tears of sadness at the prospect of missing school, a birthday party and league practice, I managed to get him into the doctor's first thing this morning.
Locum.
I am getting way too much experience of locum doctors being mad or bad. Mostly bad.
Good news was that it wasn't impetigo, the dreaded highly contagious school sores which would have meant quarantine at home. The bad news from my point of view was that the doctor related badly to both of us, wouldn't answer my questions properly, claimed that his legs had bites on them from unnamed general household 'things', that I should clean the house more, and prescribed a corticosteroid/antibacterial cream without any guidance on how often or long to use it for.
We saw Dr Locum at the surgery. Yes I do need to clean my house more. Those marks on his legs are definitely NOT bites. Actually given the fumigation from the fleas a month back, I'd wonder what mysterious unnamed bites could be hanging out. Actually I think that a doctor making such a claim could come up with at least ONE actual example of a possible biter. Especially given how many times I pressed Dr Locum for this information. I also asked whether he considered that the problem was bacterial or fungal but I couldn't get that out of him either. Although surely bites don't require anything but time to heal and perhaps some anti-itch cream? And more crucially something done about the source of the biters - I wouldn't have thought an extra vacuum would be enough.
But as we already know that they are not bites, we may as well ignore his ridiculous prognosis. But what about his pharmaceutical prescription? Why prescribe a antibacterial/steroid cream? Well I do believe him when he says it will ease the marks and the (pre-existing) eczema as well. Steroids do that. But on what grounds do we suppress symptoms without looking to the actual cause of a new skin lesion which has spread fairly rapidly along the arms and legs of a six year old boy?
The analagy between the bandaids and steroid creams being applied to the global financial system and the steroid cream being prescribed for one little boy's patchy looking legs only came to me later today. But before I hit the similarities, I spent some time at our local health shop.
Maggie and Kerrie are wonderful resources of knowledge here in Wetville. Today I had the benefit of Maggie's knowledge as we discussed various options for improving the health of my boy. I was pleased to realise as we chatted that my lotions and potions cupboard is already quite well equipped. I already have some colloidal silver cream, some grapefruit seed extract, aqueous cream to which I have added a few drops of tea tree oil, vitamin C and various other immune boosting vitamins and minerals. So I opted to buy some more vitamin C and also a bottle of liquid zinc to push all of our defences against the general cold lurgy which ails this house at the moment.
I'll be watching how Fionn's legs respond to the regular creaming with colloidal silver and the zinc boost ( we were already doing probiotics, flax seed oil and a childrens general multivitamin each day). Despite the poorly nature of too many people round here, mostly coughing and snivelling grumpy old me, I've mostly managed to keep up the proper meals routine. Fionn's very own home grown broccoli is nearly ready to eat and we all know that this stuff has magic properties which lead to great health and the scoring of tries on Saturday morning.
Locum.
I am getting way too much experience of locum doctors being mad or bad. Mostly bad.
Good news was that it wasn't impetigo, the dreaded highly contagious school sores which would have meant quarantine at home. The bad news from my point of view was that the doctor related badly to both of us, wouldn't answer my questions properly, claimed that his legs had bites on them from unnamed general household 'things', that I should clean the house more, and prescribed a corticosteroid/antibacterial cream without any guidance on how often or long to use it for.
We saw Dr Locum at the surgery. Yes I do need to clean my house more. Those marks on his legs are definitely NOT bites. Actually given the fumigation from the fleas a month back, I'd wonder what mysterious unnamed bites could be hanging out. Actually I think that a doctor making such a claim could come up with at least ONE actual example of a possible biter. Especially given how many times I pressed Dr Locum for this information. I also asked whether he considered that the problem was bacterial or fungal but I couldn't get that out of him either. Although surely bites don't require anything but time to heal and perhaps some anti-itch cream? And more crucially something done about the source of the biters - I wouldn't have thought an extra vacuum would be enough.
But as we already know that they are not bites, we may as well ignore his ridiculous prognosis. But what about his pharmaceutical prescription? Why prescribe a antibacterial/steroid cream? Well I do believe him when he says it will ease the marks and the (pre-existing) eczema as well. Steroids do that. But on what grounds do we suppress symptoms without looking to the actual cause of a new skin lesion which has spread fairly rapidly along the arms and legs of a six year old boy?
The analagy between the bandaids and steroid creams being applied to the global financial system and the steroid cream being prescribed for one little boy's patchy looking legs only came to me later today. But before I hit the similarities, I spent some time at our local health shop.
Maggie and Kerrie are wonderful resources of knowledge here in Wetville. Today I had the benefit of Maggie's knowledge as we discussed various options for improving the health of my boy. I was pleased to realise as we chatted that my lotions and potions cupboard is already quite well equipped. I already have some colloidal silver cream, some grapefruit seed extract, aqueous cream to which I have added a few drops of tea tree oil, vitamin C and various other immune boosting vitamins and minerals. So I opted to buy some more vitamin C and also a bottle of liquid zinc to push all of our defences against the general cold lurgy which ails this house at the moment.
I'll be watching how Fionn's legs respond to the regular creaming with colloidal silver and the zinc boost ( we were already doing probiotics, flax seed oil and a childrens general multivitamin each day). Despite the poorly nature of too many people round here, mostly coughing and snivelling grumpy old me, I've mostly managed to keep up the proper meals routine. Fionn's very own home grown broccoli is nearly ready to eat and we all know that this stuff has magic properties which lead to great health and the scoring of tries on Saturday morning.
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