LEFTOVER ANTIBIOTICS!!!!

so now i am back in houston and there is absolutely nothing to do. so far i’ve watched about 2-3 hours of MINDLESS TV, played a game of darts against myself, played with my two weener dogs, and it’s only 5:30. Damnit.

So out of boredom and nerdiness i went downstairs and raided my parents’ medication cabinet to name as many generics as i could looking at their prescriptions and just to be nosey =) so i look around, see the usual meds my parents have told me about and then i find a rather new (new as in i haven’t seen it sinc the last time i was here, which was around janurary) bottle of amoxicillin prescribed to my dad from back in march. so the course of therapy should have been completed by april but there’s still 10 AMOXICILLIN TABLETS inside. WTF!!!!!! this is how resistance to antibiotics DEVELOPS!!! i ask my dad about it and he says the doc only said to take it for __ days and that there would be leftover so he could save it for later.

THAT IS SO WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS. why would any doc do that? please tell me that my dad was at fault and just di dn’t take them all because the latter option that this doctor is fueling and adding to the huge problem of antibioic resistance is more scary than my dad simply forgetting to take all the meds.

Tsk, then I keep going and i find some left over levaquin that was prescribed to my mom a while back. They gave her 10 tabs but the sig says take one by mouth every day for 5 days. WTF so they gave her 5 extra. FOR WHAT PURPOSE?!?! TO SAVE FOR LATER?? bad, bad, bad!

maybe i’m just missing here something or i haven’t been completely educated on antibiotics and there’s some exceptions out there. but in patho, we learned about the vicious cycle of resistance and it ain’t pretty..

sigh, what a nerd i am.