Evidence Based Medicine

The most recent episode of Lost we watched (Season 2 episode 1), was ironically called "Man of Science, Man of Faith". Ironic because its tie-in with the following story.
So over the last week or so Valerie and I have had the worst sore throats we can ever remember having. Finally we got an appointment to see some Drs. yesterday. Same time, different physicians. My doc, a tall male resident just a few years older than me and with quite a few more pounds of physique and intimidating muscularity, inspects my throat and nose and asks me about my symptoms and concludes that, based on evidence about oropharyngeal infections (the "say ahh" region), it doesn't really hold water to prescribe antibiotics. I didn't have a white film on my throat (evidence of bacterial infection), and even if I did, it would only take a few extra days to kick even without antibiotics. In the next wing Valerie is seeing another resident, she is a tiny lady with a middle-eastern accent, who is very friendly and even a little apologetic, as if she was the one who got Valerie sick. She comes to the same conclusion about the etyology of Val's sickness (viral) but says she'll order a strep test anyway. Val does the strep test, which comes back positive. I'm in the room at this point, and after the physician's explanation of recurrence of strep infections, we have a 14 month old, etc. etc., we should be on antibiotics. After writing Val's prescription she walks us to my doc's office and says he should write a script for me, too. He says he'll see me in a room in a sec. So a few minutes later we go in a room and he has a piece of paper, which turns out to be a literature review about the efficacy of antibiotics on strep infections such as mine, and that evidence suggests that there is really no benefit to antibiotics. I am very impressed that he stuck to his guns. Did I mention he was all muscly-armed?

So now our house is the setting of a mini clinical trial. Val is on the amox and I am purely on my own immune system. We will see if there is any difference in progression.

If I forget to update you on this, someone remind me...unless you're not interested, in which case, keep it to yerself.

In other news, I defend my thesis tomorrow at 4:00. Eat less red meat. Eat more fish. Pray for me.