chemicallvs

20th May 2007

It's often said that Doctors (and in this case, medical students) make the worst patients.  Well it's true, at least in respect to me.

I'm sick a lot, and it doesn't help that I spend most of my time working in a hospital around sick people.  I got so run-down that I managed to come down with an infection caused by bacteria that normally live peacefully in your body (commensal flora) - yep, they saw my immune system was down and took their chance to jump it in a dark alley haha!  Needless to say I ended up on antibiotics in an effort to get better and make it through the last few weeks of my surgery rotation.

The thing with antibiotics is that you really need to remember to take them when you're supposed to.  This allows for the drug to build up in your system and fight the good fight.  However, if you forget to take them, the concentration of the drug falls and this can give the bacteria a chance to evolve and develop resistance to the antibiotic, effectively making it useless.  Yes, so it's important to remember to take your antibiotics, and because I'm an idiot and forever losing track of time, it's also important to do as I say and not as I do lol!  But I'm getting better so I must not have screwed up too badly.

Remembering to take your prescription drugs is just as important.  Their effects depend on the maintenance of effective concentration levels of the drug.  When you take your medicine, the drug concentration degrades over a period of time based on that drug's specific 'half-life' - time taken to degrade to half the effective concentration of the drug.  The longer the half-life, the longer the drug stays in your system.  Each time you take the drug, it adds to the development of steady-state concentration levels in your body (so one dose may be nearly degraded, the other half degraded and the new dose propping up the levels).  With drugs that have shorter half-lives it becomes very important to remember to take them as they can leave your system quickly and stop doing their job if effective concentration levels aren't being maintained.  Some drugs, such as anti-depressants, can put you into a withdrawal state if you deplete their concentration levels too much, because the body becomes dependent on the drugs effects. 

Which brings me to another reason why I suck as a patient.  I've managed to put myself into withdrawal from anti-depressants three times in the last month and a half.  Whether it be because I ran out and didn't have time/forgot to get my script filled or because I left them at home when I went on camp, I ended up being stupid and miserably ill.  It's not fun - the headaches, nausea, tremor, tachycardia (fast heart-rate), fever, nightmares and total out of body experience was something I swore I wouldn't repeat when I recognised it the first time.  But there I was today, in withdrawal, scoffing down some pharmacy jelly beans just so I could take my tablets and start feeling better (need to take them with food to aid absorption).  Yes....I suck at being a patient.

On a good note though, I did get the new Used CD!  Plus the Taste of Chaos Tour is coming to Perth (for once we are not forgotten) so that makes me feel better (even though it's happening during the exam period...nooooo!).

Assignments to do...people to bleed hehe,

Into your icey blues....xoxo