I’ve had this conversation with Pam via email regarding my bladder/kidney infection and I feel I should take a moment to explain myself to everyone. The reason? Because in the last six months, I’ve had very similar conversations with many others.
I do appreciate everyone trying to come to my aid with a “natural” cure to what might be a bacterial infection. However, there is no “natural” cure for bacterial infections. This is where my education in nursing, biology, and microbiology pays off. Please know that I value your friendship and the kind words you offer, but science trumps non-science.
And for those who will continue to say that “natural” options are harmless, I worked with many patients who were proof that this is not the case. ANYTHING YOU PUT IN YOUR BODY MAY CAUSE YOU HARM. The word “natural” means nothing. Neither does “over-the-counter” mean okay for everyone. Each of us has different needs and different metabolisms. And this is why you don’t take anyone else’s medications. They can harm you. Even if you have the same symptoms, your body chemistry is not the same as someone else’s. You may be taking medications that are contraindicated with the medications they’re taking. Combining them can lead to organ failure or death. This is why you don’t share meds. This is why you consult real doctors and not the lady in the vitamin or herb store.
I respect your right to do what you will with your body, but please do not presume that this is medically safe for me, for your children (don’t even get me started on what I saw children go through because you will weep openly and for many hours), or even for yourself. Your doctor is the only one who can tell you for certain.
This is what I wrote to her after she shared a story about her friend who was “miraculously cured” by an herbal remedy:
UTIs cannot be cured with herbs. Only the right antibiotic can kill the bacteria. However, if you have a spastic bladder, the irritation and urgency can be helped by certain herbal remedies for some people. But not everyone can or should take them. There is no control over the herbal and naturopathic industry like there is over the drug industry. Batches of herbal “medicines” from the same manufacturer can vary widely in the amounts of active and inactive ingredients. And not everyone has the ability to process those remedies properly anyway. Unless you’re under a doctor’s care (someone who can monitor your kidney and liver function), you should not use “herbal or natural potions”.
(Pam mentioned a friend in her email: “Until my friend had a UTI for weeks… she’d gone through three or four rounds of antibiotics… even had blood in her urine. The pain, as you know with a kidney infection, is intolerable.
Finally a woman at work told her to go to a local herb store and the person there gave her something… a week later she was fine. No lie. Shocked the hell out of me. Ever since then I’ve treated my UTIs with herbs.”)
My guess is that your friend was being treated with drugs that weren’t very effective or weren’t quickly effective. Over time, she could have developed a resistant strain of bacteria from using the wrong antibiotics for that particular bacteria. It can take a while for cultures to come back with an effective treatment for someone who has been treated with antibiotics during that same infection. Unless you have a urine specimen from someone who has NOT received any sort of treatment, you’re left playing a guessing game. One medication may provide false-susceptibility results during the culturing period. Or they can obscure other necessary information. By the time the doctors got around to treating her effectively, she’d started her herbal treatment, and she equated feeling better with the herbs she was taking. That’s not hard science. If fact, it’s no science at all. That’s luck of the draw.
How do cultures work? Your specimen is placed on a petri dish(es) and spread out. Disks of various antibiotics are placed in different sections of each dish. Whether or not there is growth around these disks, and how much growth, will tell someone in the lab which antibiotic is most effective. Some are slightly effective, but not entirely. Others aren’t effective at all. And then there are the medications that prevent growth completely. That’s the antibiotic you want! You could use one of the other not-quite-as-effective meds, but you run the risk of not clearing your infection completely.
I don’t mean to be coming across as a big naysayer, but this is simple science (and I was high dean’s academic list in nursing school for this leg of the course).
There is no way to rid yourself naturally of bacteria in your bladder or kidney or anywhere else in your body. Trying to do so can actually lead to sepsis (been there, done that, almost died). By the time they find the culprit for your infection, you could be dead.
Does that clear up the whole “how to treat a bacterial infection question”? I hope so. I can go into more detail if needed.
Now, regarding Jenn’s comment about universal healthcare on that same post, I hesitate to comment on this, but then again, having worked in healthcare as long as I did, I feel I’m obligated to help educate people who haven’t worked in the field.
Believe me when I say this: we do not want universal or socialized healthcare. I’ve worked with nurses from Europe and Canada and every single one of them would rather die a lingering death than to be subjected to the disaster that is universal and/or socialized medicine. Actually, many of them could face a lingering death if subjected to the healthcare systems in their native countries. Canada is better than Europe and that’s really not much of a consolation when you consider the shortcomings of both systems.
The closest we get to that right now: California’s Work Comp system. The very system that has screwed with me for over four years. The very system that has prolonged the suffering of thousands of injured workers.
The simple fact is that our healthcare system isn’t nearly as screwed up as Michael Moore or anyone else would have you believe. The only real problem we have with healthcare is our current system of HMOs and the incompentent people they hire to approve or deny your treatments. It becomes about profit and the people who are hired and trained to deny claims are often people who have only a high school education, if even that.
We could never maintain our current level of healthcare access if funds were meted out by the government to cover everyone. As it is, we don’t get adequate reimbursement from the government now and that’s based on many fewer people they currently cover. Children’s Hospital became “Rady’s” Children Hospital because they needed big time funding since California and the feds started cutting reimbursement rates in the mid 90s; we’ve never recovered. Once you take money out of that system, it’s horribly difficult to get the funding back.
We can’t run our hospitals effectively right now without bond measures every election being passed to provide the necessary funding to maintain facilities, staffing ratios, and stay technologically current.
True story: my very first chat buddy ever was a young man from Scotland. We met via a John Denver fan club on Yahoo back in the days when Yahoo had “clubs” instead of groups. He’d hurt his back getting a pizza out of his oven. I know! Hey, when it happens, it happens. Anyhow, Ian was seen by a doctor within a week. He was given pain medication, anti-inflammatories, and told to go rest. Xrays were being scheduled. He didn’t couldn’t get in any sooner than three months from the date of his injury. His MRI? It took almost two years before he could have that done. It took him six years to get the surgery he needed. Six years. And during that time, he was in pain. His story has been repeated to me over and over again by nurses who have worked in those systems and also by patients who’ve had to suffer under those systems.
Are there people who don’t mind the wait or who really don’t care because they’re healthy? Yes. And for the healthy among us, the system will work. But for those who are in need of more direct care more frequently, these systems of healthcare delivery can be horrifying.
Socialized medicine and universal healthcare CENTRALIZE treatment centers and resources. There are fewer resources available to a larger number of people.
Do we need to change our healthcare system to help more people? Yes, for those who are uninsured or underinsured. Is that really something we need the government to do? Not really. We need to hold insurance companies responsible, purely and simply. They are the ones who drive up prices and make insurance more unaffordable for many companies (especially small ones) and individuals.
The overhaul cannot come in the form of government sponsorship or takeover. We can’t get the proper funding now and it won’t get better any time soon. The insurance companies are the ones that need to be revamped and until that happens, there’ll always be a huge gap between what we need and what we actually get.
And that, my friends, is this (pretty much former) nurse’s opinion and experience.
