I’ve had this awful cold for over a week. Started in my head and has dropped down into my chest, making breathing difficult. But I won’t go to the doctor. It’s a cold, I reason, there is no cure for the common cold. What can a doctor do?
My sister-in-law dropped a frozen turkey on her toe once. The toe swelled up and was painful, but heck, she thought, that’s what happens to toes when you drop frozen turkeys on them. Sis-in-law works in admitting at a hospital. A doctor just happened upon her when she took off her shoe to relieve some of the pain. The toe was broken.
What criteria do you use? When is your illness bad enough to see a doctor?
i go when it interferes with what i want to do. work? not necessarily. karate, probably. when i broke my ankle, i didnt go till the next day, when i still couldn’t walk. hope ya feel better soon.
I started coughing before Christmas. I went to the doctor last Friday because I felt like I had a gorilla sitting on my chest. Like Biggirl, though, I am very hesitant to go to the doctor if I’ve got a cold, since I know they can’t do anything for it & I’d rather not waste the time if I’m not going to feel better. I mean, I can tell myself to get plenty of rest & drink lots of fluids. Generally, I don’t go in unless I’ve got a fever of 102 or higher or I’m producing green snot. My dad’s a doctor so usually I just call him & ask him what to do.
Having no internal doctor barometer I usually defer to my wife.
Instructions on medications say “See a doctor if condition persists”.
One week may or may not be persistant. You ought to consider seeing a doctor. A doctor can decide if you need antibiotics or if your symptoms represent something else.
My friend Ron went to the ER with “a bad cold, or the flu, that just got worse and worse” He had had a heart attack a day prior, and they by-passed him in time. He was 41 then, now he is 43 and has given up Camel straights and Mountain Dew.
This is usually the criteria I use. My husband, friends, or boss (I’ve had a boss actually pay for a taxi to the ER) will nag until I can take it no more.
Kvallulf, I’d rather crawl to the hospital on one bloody stump, then have to submit to the humiliation of an ambulance ride.
When my family starts planning my funeral and that guy with the top hat and black suit arrives at my house with a tape measure for my coffin…
…seriously, I only go to a doctor when I cannot do anything, even getting out of bed and eating. Luckily, I only get like this once a year around “musical season.” Since I usually have so many practices for such long hours, it’s easy to get burnout by the time the musical will be performing. I just go to the doctor, they give me a penicillan shot, and I go back to school the next day, just in time for the musical and usually feeling better. This has happened two years in a row and it hasn’t failed yet!
I usually wait a long time because I believe the body has the wisdom to cure itself. When it doesn’t, I see the doctor.
Bear in mind that seeing the doctor when you are deaf is no day at the beach. The communication is horrid & have to write out what I have & what RX I want before coming in.
One time I got pericarditis for a whole year before going in for an EKG, etc. The doctor said to take some aspirin, which I did & it worked. What was that? $250.00 for that info?
So, now I take ifobrufen, which is anti inflammatory first, & 89% of the time it does the trick for just about anything.
Me and my doctor agree that a guy can go through hell and back and walk around with a grin but as soon as he sees a rash his tail goes between his legs and he heads for the doctor. (This applies to me too)
Funny, but a broken toe is often given as something you don’t go to the doctor for. Sure they can tell you if it’s broken by x-raying it, but they don’t really do anything for it other than tell you to keep it immobilize and maybe splint it. If this visit is going to cost you money, it’s really not worth it.
(And in checking this fact, I ran across a page with this awesome line: “X rays are not essential but are often necessary to provide patient satisfaction.”)
I go to the doctor when a bone protrudes from my skin, when the bleeding hasn’t stopped after a day or two or when my wifes nagging me about needing a doctor finally gets to me.
I must confess that I am not immune to the popular reluctance to go to the doctor, despite nearly being one myself. I have to go once a year for a thyroid test, and I tend to save up all my complaints until then. (I do self-diagnose and then hit up the sample cabinets occasionally. The Claritin Man is my friend.)
When deciding whether or not to go to the doctor, remember Dr. J’s First Rule of Medicine–if it’s getting better, don’t get too worked up about it.
As for upper respiratory infections, they will usually get you some Claritin or Zyrtec and an inhaled steroid (Flonase, etc.), and little else. (Keep in mind that this is Kentucky, The Allergy State.) If it acts like a sinus infection (pain and pressure in the sinuses, lingering, +/- fever/chills), you’ll get an antibiotic, although the jury is out over how much good it does.
I assume that all of you are relatively young, healthy people, and thus have no pressing need for routine health care maintenance. I also assume that the ladies are getting an annual Pap smear. Other than that, I’d say you should go to the doctor when you start wondering whether you need to.
Yes–not only did you find out what you had and how to treat it, but you found out that it wasn’t something more serious. There are plenty of things next to pericarditis in a differential diagnosis that an aspirin won’t take care of.
I’ve had a “cold” since late October. I have pain in the area where my kidneys are. I often get temperatures between 103° and 106°F. I started to notice a muscle spasm type fluttering in my chest 3 days ago. I’m tired all the time. My back is swollen. I honestly don’t remember the last time I saw a doctor and I can guarantee that I won’t see another one in the near future.
When something unusual happens. That is, when my colds don’t follow the usual “2 days sore throat -> 1 day fever -> 7 days congestion” routine.
So far, this has only happened twice. The first time, it was a persistent sore throat that turned out to be strep. The second time, I went to the doc with near-constant diarrhea and was told “it’s just a virus. Have some antibiotics.”
I just ended a streak of over twenty years without seeing a doctor. I’ve led a charmed life, I’ll be the first to admit, but in that time I never had any health complaints that didn’t resolve themselves fairly quickly. I get the usual number of colds and the occasional stomach bug, but maybe once every three years would a cold linger long enough to make me consider going to the doctor; by the time I made up my mind, however, I’d always turned the corner. Despite being significantly overweight, I was typically able to do whatever I took a notion to, could walk uphill in San Francisco faster than most of my gym-going, clean-living colleagues without getting winded, etc. On several occasions, I had to submit to insurance physicals conducted by a nurse at my place of business (pee in a cup, give a blood sample, answer some questions, and have blood pressure checked), and each time my blood pressure was well within the normal range and I was never denied coverage or quoted a higher premium, so I had to assume that there was no evidence that my death was imminent.
What finally broke my streak was that as a result of a fairly typical cold back in August, I developed an ear infection that continued to interfere with my hearing and was uncomfortable (though not really painful). When it hadn’t improved any after a week, I decided I needed to get it dealt with. While I was there, I scheduled a comprehensive physical exam – I’m over 35 now, and have two small kids, so I figured if there were anything wrong I’d better find out and deal with it. I’m happy to say that other than borderline elevated LDL cholesterol, I’m apparently free of detectable health problems.
OK, I have also had a “cold” for about six months. Is it possible we are all infecting one another? Some kind of computer virus?
P.S. My mother says if I don’t stop coughing at her over the phone, she is going to SEND a doctor to my apartment. Also, some guy named Armand Duval has been following me around . . .
Handy, my first doctor when I moved here was deaf. I had no idea he was deaf, actually. I thought he had a slight speech impediment, and felt mildly annoyed when he discussed my birth control at a volume I wasn’t comfortable with in the hall. Then I saw he’d written a book about how damned hard it was to get into med school as a deaf person, and I thought, “Aha, Cranky, you dumbass, he’s DEAF.” It was a good book. Anyway, he has quite a practice with the deaf community, who love being able to go to someone who understands them.
As for me? I’m like others, I go to the doctor only when it appears that my body isn’t healing on its own. I get over illnesses VERY slowly, so that can be some time before I break down and go. Last time I couldn’t shake a cold, the FNP said I was right to come in, but I was also right to wait as long as I did. My husband had been nagging me for a week to go, but I didn’t bother until a co-worker told me I could have a sinus infection. She was right, as it turned out.
When I was knocked up, I went to every appointment religiously, however. Now that I am a parent, I take my son for every regular well-baby checkup, but we only go otherwise when his symptoms suggest something like an ear infection. For fevers, colds, irritability, etc, we just pour in some infant tylenol and wait for improvement.