the usual, bed rest, lots of fluids, tylenol for the aches. There is nothing the hell you can do for a virus in general without spending an insane amount of money for high end antivirals once it has passed the tamiflu point [which is in general by the time you figure out it is the flu and get to a doctor…]
Look, I know when I have the flu versus a cold. I treat them both the same, bed rest, fluids, meds for aches. Why should I pay a $20 copay of $250 for an office visit for something the doctor is going to tell me to do anyway? The only time I go to a doc is when it rolls into bronchitis on the way to pneumonia. Then I can use antibiotics.
And I was innoculated against it, then a couple years back I got my booster =) Of course I was also innoculated against yellow fever and I dont think I am going to be digging a lock on the Panama Canal any time soon either
Yeah, I can’t get behind this pitting. I’m definitely not the type who runs my kids to the doctor for every little sniffle, but if my kids have severe flu symptoms, you bet I’m going to take them to the clinic.
Kids can die from the flu (although it is exceedingly rare). I haven’t yet heard of a kid dying from a UTI.
Most people if they have the flu (any type) or even a bad cold should stay out of work. Most work places require a doctors note if absense is greater than a day or two.
A lot of people HAVE to go to the doc if they are sick even if the end results are a couple of days in bed with hot drinks and vitamins.
It’s normal flu season and also the time for throat problems and colds. Queues are pretty inevitable at this time of a normal year but with all the shite about swine flu in the media a lot of people are even more aware of their health.
I’m curious why people are assuming the people at the walk-in clinic were children.
It was not stated or implied in the OP, yet a couple of people jumped to that conclusion.
Is it something in the way the OP was written?
(I wait until near-death before going to the doctor, so I have no horse in this race.)
I made that leap because he took his daughter in and my mind went right to “pediatrician” - poor reading comprehension. I don’t think any of the points made here, though, lose their relevancy when applied to a walk-in clinic vs. a pediatrician’s office.
Technically I’m calling it Hiney flu now, in respect for the pig farmers.
ETA: People giving RickJay stick for taking his daughter to the doctor with a UTI must be people who have never had one. They are miserable and must be diagnosed and treated by a doctor.
I understand the irritation - it’s like the normal irritation for trying to see your doctor for a legitimate reason and there are 30 people there with runny noses and coughs (i.e. a cold, which your doctor can do nothing for), except even worse because this cold season there are 30 people there who are sure they have Hiney flu (but they don’t - they have a runny nose and a cough).
No one is doing that. They are being sarcastic, they are making fun of him for acting like his daughter’s sickness is ‘real’ and everyone else’s is mere hysteria. It’s not his going to the Doctor that people are getting on his case for, it’s the self-important judgment of everyone else’s reason for going to the Doctor.
Oh, I’m not disputing that you need to see a doctor for a UTI. I’ve had them before, and know they’re unbelievably unpleasant. My issue with the OP is that other people’s reasons for being at the clinic are likely no less legitimate than his, and it’s impossible for him to judge who needs to be there and who doesn’t.
It was the same judgment as the qualified health professional I spoke to, so there’s nothing “self-important” about it. According to the qualified nurse, the great majority of people in the waiting room were people with a sniffle who were going bananas thinking they had H1N1.
I would just like to comment on that nurse. While you can’t tell the difference between H1N1 and seasonal influenza, well over 99% of influenza currently around is H1N1. If she thought that the people had colds, then they likely did not have H1N1. However, if they truly had influenza (the flu) then she is wrong because most of them did probably have it, so saying that you can’t tell between different types of flu and so therefore they likely did not have H1N1 is either wrong or contributing to calling every upper respiratory virus “the flu”, which is something a health care professional should not be contributing to.
Also, I would expect walk-in clinics to have a higher proportion of sick people. Those who have regular doctors can usually be reassured over the telephone and appropriately triaged. I try to keep the true influenza cases out of my office unless they are high risk.
She didn’t say they shouldn’t be there. She said they probably didn’t have H1N1 (if the words you typed were exactly what she said). If I have a high fever and I’m coughing so bad that I think I need to see a doctor, whether I have the H1N1, another type of flu, or some other sort of illness is immaterial. It’s not “going bananas” to go to the doctor when you think you need to, provided you’re truly not going there for a bit of a runny nose. I have a hard time believing there are many people who would expose themselves to a doctor’s office (and a walk-in clinic at that - those places are miserable) for a runny nose at this point.
