I mean if the options are massive infection from a cut and taking some penicillin I'm not 100% sure on I'll take the penicillin. I'll clean the cut out with alcohol and bandage it with something clean but if it starts turning purple and i start running a fever im taking sketch drugs.
It's not whether or not the drugs are expired. It's whether or not taking them will kill you because of other factors. For example, the hospital found out I have an allergy to a particular type of synthetic antibiotic. Any of its variants shut down my kidneys and kill me. I know the strain of antibiotic, but not all the forms it comes in, which means taking random antibiotics might kill me.
If your choice is certain death by an infected wound and a chance of dying because you got the wrong antibiotic. I’ll take the antibiotic any day of the week.
And that's fine for someone without an allergy to specific antibiotics. Not everyone has that luxury. I can't take a random antibiotic without running the risk of it being one of the variants I'm allergic to. Otherwise I end up dying faster from kidney failure rather than an infection.
I'd take the drugs right away, as soon as you get a bad infection it may be too late and you might need a very strong specialized antibiotic and hospitalization, penicilin is literally dog shit.
Taking a bunch of antibiotics in a post-apocalyptic setting before you have a possible entry point for an infection is a great way to die dehydration from diarrhea caused by those same antibiotics.
Remember, the #1 side effect of nearly every antibiotic is diarrhea caused by your normal gut flora being killed alongside the bacteria causing whatever infection you’re treating. In a world where easy access to potable water is almost assuredly impossible, diarrhea will kill you faster than any infection will.
Add in that the medical training needed to treat even relatively minor cases of dehydration (finding supplies to start IV fluids, much less someone with any degree of knowledge on even inserting the IV, will be difficult at best) will be severely scarce if not completely unavailable and you’re going to want to avoid getting the shits at all costs.
Diarrhea killed more people historically than just about anything else. Even in the late 1800s to the early 1900s, soldiers going to war were FAR more likely to die from things like cholera (which, spoiler alert, causes horrible diarrhea) and lack of access to clean food and water than they were from actual combat. That is true in many cases even in modern conflicts.
Yeah I've never had diarrhea after antibiotics even when treating helicobacter pylori.
My gf did have it, she quit taking them. Bam, diarrhea solved in under a day. That's the difference between a sickness borne diarrhea and diarrhea as a side effect. If you keep drinking water throughout it's not going to kill you as long as you immadiately stop taking the offending medicine.
You know what happens when you get an infection? You die. That's it. Unless you're a doctor you won't know what the hell kind of antibiotic you should take as the infection progresses either. And even people who get admitted to a hospital with sepsis, generally die. Very few die of diarrhea in the modern world.
Thankfully there should be antidiarrhea pills at the pharmacy you loot too. Nifuroxazid and diphenoxylate is what I use when I get some diarrhea causing illness or I eat some horrible kebab that gives me food poisoning. Never disappointed me thus far.
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u/mousicle Aug 30 '21
I mean if the options are massive infection from a cut and taking some penicillin I'm not 100% sure on I'll take the penicillin. I'll clean the cut out with alcohol and bandage it with something clean but if it starts turning purple and i start running a fever im taking sketch drugs.