A huge personal THANK YOU

[pegkerr]

I would just like to take this opportunity to send my very heartfelt personal thank you to Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin. And to Howard Florey and Ernst Chan, who developed the procedure to purify it (the three of them shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for their discovery).

If I were living as recently as 65 years previously, I might have been in fear for Delia's life tonight. As it is, she will probably be well enough to go back to school in a couple of days. For most of the history of humanity, people would have looked upon a recovery that swift as a miracle.

We get complacent, with all the accomplishments of modern medicine, but I don't want to forget that it damn well is.

Comments

Yaay!

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

I used to get sick like this when I was a child. the doc, Dr. Pakula, came to our house though. I got a number of penicillin shots while on a pallet on our couch so mom could look after me.]

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Re: Yaay!

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Ditto, but I always got terramycin, as we found out I'm allergic to penicillin when I was 2, and already in the hospital for a tonsillectomy (anaphylactic shock were me, if I hadn't already been in the hospital...)

I grouse about being allergic to penicillin and sulfa, and about having very bad reactions to most other antibiotics, but at least there are some that I *can* take.

[chelsearoad.livejournal.com]

Great news. Sleep well.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear that she's doing better.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I have the most personal of reasons to share your gratitude: if I had been born ten years before I was, I would almost certainly have died of an infection I had at 5. As it was, I was successfully treated with penicillin. (I wasn't very grateful at the time, since I was getting those shots every three hours round the clock, but I didn't understand the situation.)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

The time I had a very bad UTI, it was a bit of a shock to think that I might have gone the way of Tycho Brahe in earlier centuries. ANd by that point I'd already been through several cases of strep and one staph infection that in retrospect could have carried me off as well. Yes, thankful.