{"id":1759,"date":"2015-11-06T17:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T22:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2016-10-27T23:16:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T23:16:35","slug":"modern-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2015\/11\/06\/modern-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"needle\"<\/a>In the fall of 2012, I had a peritonsillar abscess.\u00a0 This is an extremely painful bacterial infection of the tonsils. Think strep throat gone wild and partying in a single tonsil.\u00a0 You can\u2019t speak clearly, you can\u2019t breathe well, and swallowing is incredibly painful.\u00a0 Treatment?\u00a0 You slice open the tonsil to let the infection drain, then give the patient antibiotics and some reasonably heavy duty pain drugs.\u00a0 If you\u2019re lucky, this treatment is on an outpatient basis, but people are often hospitalized due to complications.<\/p>\n

It is painful enough that you welcome the relief of the incision, by the way.<\/p>\n

It used to have another name \u2013 quinsy.\u00a0 While it can still be fatal, people die of it less frequently than they used to.\u00a0 (Elizabeth I and George Washington are thought to have died of it).<\/p>\n

While I do think modern medicine has its problems, I get upset at people sneering at it.\u00a0 I really, no kidding, would be dead by now if it weren\u2019t for modern medicine and antibiotics.\u00a0 That peritonsillar abscess was the most recent of a series of infections (I used to be prone to strep) and illnesses that I\u2019ve never really mentally tagged as serious.\u00a0 After all, I got better, didn\u2019t I?<\/p>\n

But looking at them from the lack of modern medicine perspective, and friends, I\u2019m quite lucky to be alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the fall of 2012, I had a peritonsillar abscess.\u00a0 This is an extremely painful bacterial infection of the tonsils. Think strep throat gone wild and partying in a single tonsil.\u00a0 You can\u2019t speak clearly, you can\u2019t breathe well, and swallowing is incredibly painful.\u00a0 Treatment?\u00a0 You slice open the tonsil to let the infection drain, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Modern Medicine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2048,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions\/2048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}