If you say so...

Today I went back for my 3 day checkup. I feel a lot better. I'm still snotty and coughing, but my incipient sinus infection is gone. I'm a little sick, but I'm not dragging around feeling exhausted and with that overall achy feeling. So yay for Korean drugs :)

My doctor decided to change my prescription, since I'd responded so well. He said he was removing some medicine and adding some cough medicine.

Growing up, I was a fairly sickly kid. Seems like I caught just about every bug that came around. So I took antibiotics a few times a year for the whole time I was growing up. And every time, the family doctor would lecture me that even if I felt better, I still had to finish all my antibiotics so that I wouldn't create drug resistant germs.

So I asked the Korean doctor if I had been on antibiotics, and if it was ok to stop after only 3 days. After a discussion clarifying the meaning of "antibiotics", he said it was ok to stop. I relayed my childhood doctor's instructions, but he assured me that since my illness had been so slight, I didn't need to take antibiotics anymore**. Ok... If you say so... I just hope my sinus infection doesn't come back resistant to that antibiotic. Meanwhile, I can hear Dr. John protesting in my mind's ear...

I also told him that the medicine packets made me silly, and asked if he could give me something with fewer side effects. He said he'd try, but I got the impression that anything that's effective is going to make me loopy.


** Koreans don't wear seatbelts either, which seems to trigger the same sort of "Uh oh, I'm breaking the rules!" instinct in me. The seatbelts in the back seat of most Korean taxis don't even work, so I usually try to sit up front. If I don't wear a seatbelt, I have a nagging, "something's wrong" feeling, and the last thing I need is added anxiety while I'm watching my driver perform death-defying maneuvers in Korean traffic.