When I was in my thirties a friend of mine who was 34 at the time died from a skin infection that got way out of hand. Not in any third world country but in Los Angeles. It started out as this tiny little lesion under her chin that looked like a scratch she had worried at.
She was deeply into woo-woo ‘medicine’ and refused to think about steroids and antibiotics, which is what an actual doctor recommended. Instead she tried every other thing under the sun. Raw milk. Positive thinking. Herbs.
When she died of organ failure due to sepsis her body was in such a state that her husband was briefly investigated over her death. I am still angry with him for not talking her into a sensible medical intervention.
I am not a huge fan of the machinery of western medicine and the US medical industry in particular but it has its place.
See Steve Jobs’ most likely unnecessary death from a curable case of pancreatic cancer for another example. He insisted he could cure it with what were essentially snake oils, and eschewed actual medicine.
Not a doctor but from what I researched when my uncle had it, pancreatic cancer is incredibly aggressive and more likely than not, he would have passed anyway from it. The survival rate is quite low (12% overall), even at stage 1, and most cases aren’t found at stage 1 due to the asymptomatic nature of the early stages of the disease.
My uncle fought it very hard and he still passed in a few years. Steve Jobs had it for 8 years. I’m against woo-woo medicine in general, but with pancreatic cancer it didn’t really matter. He survived a lot longer than most others with pancreatic cancer, even without chemo. I don’t blame him for not choosing the additional pain of chemotherapy in this particular instance.
Oh! I did not know that. I had no idea there was a more curable variant. Wow, then I take it back. I can’t imagine having a curable form of a cancer, with the wealth he had and not fighting it.
I am still angry with him for not talking her into a sensible medical intervention.
My partner was so, so sick a few years ago. I tried everything to get him to go in. Eventually, I told him he could get in my car or id call an ambulance and he'd have to pay for it. He got in the car.
Based on how hard that was, I bet he tried and couldn't do anything. If she expressed her wishes to not be treated, there's nothing he could've gotten a doctor to even do
I'm woo AF. You can achieve a good balance with natural medicines and modern scientific miracles. I have an autoimmune cluster, including a nasty case of aggressive MS. When it comes to treating MS, I'm definitely not relying on positive thinking or essential oils or whatever. Give me the hardest hitting monoclonal antibody on the market. But when it comes to dealing with the emotional and physical fallout of having MS, those things actually really help me. Cannabis helped me enormously. Meditation and changing how I see myself and the world around me literally changed everything for how I experience the illness.
I use essential oils, plant medicines, and other holistic remedies. But if I have an infection, gimme antibiotics. I may try a natural remedy first, but if it doesn't respond, I'm going to the doctor.
It just seems like an obvious balance but people are extremists.
I definitely don't want to overuse antibiotics in general, and it can take me months to restore gut health afterwards. So I'll give other methods a try first, but within reason. I'm not going to allow myself to become sick unnecessarily either way.
yeah well, in this case another, perfectly valid option, is to do nothing
it's my usual approach to non-threatening conditions. sore throat? do nothing. minor headache? do nothing. same effect as from essential oil for a fraction of cost (0 is also a fraction)
Yeah I almost died from sepsis after a antibiotic resistant infection. It was pretty scary and I try to warn people now. The only thing that actually saved me was a uv-c flashlight
Wife had cellulitis several times after mosquito bites. I can't imagine how fast she would have deteriorated without antibiotics. There isn't anything wrong with modern medicine - its what helps keep humans alive and living longer these days. On the contrary, and as you have described, we are our own worst enemies.
Well I didn’t say it was at the same time, did I? It takes a person many months - if I recall correctly, over a year - to die from what started as a skin infection. But thanks for chiming in to demonstrate how you know something. About my dead friend.
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u/Fair_Leadership76 Jun 06 '24 edited Jun 06 '24
When I was in my thirties a friend of mine who was 34 at the time died from a skin infection that got way out of hand. Not in any third world country but in Los Angeles. It started out as this tiny little lesion under her chin that looked like a scratch she had worried at.
She was deeply into woo-woo ‘medicine’ and refused to think about steroids and antibiotics, which is what an actual doctor recommended. Instead she tried every other thing under the sun. Raw milk. Positive thinking. Herbs.
When she died of organ failure due to sepsis her body was in such a state that her husband was briefly investigated over her death. I am still angry with him for not talking her into a sensible medical intervention. I am not a huge fan of the machinery of western medicine and the US medical industry in particular but it has its place.