Recycling that Prescription

As I sat on the examining table at my doctor's office, bending over so the doctor could look at the irritated mole on the back of my neck, I coughed. A phlegmy, thick, mucousy cough (sorry for TMI), a cough I've had for over a year that comes and goes.

Out whipped my doctor's prescription pad and he scribbled away.
Take this antibiotic, he said.

Oh, this cough, it's nothing, I said. Just drainage and it coats my throat.

He shook his head and insisted I fulfill the prescription for yet another antibiotic.

I call my doctor's office the antibiotic-happy clinic, because every time I go in for whatever random reason, I leave with at least one antibiotic prescription in hand.

And I rarely take them to the pharmacy to actually get the medicine.

Of course I do for serious things, like strep throat.

But my doctor once kept prescribing a variety of antibiotics, one after the other after the other, for the close within the appropriate range of bacteria in my urine. She wanted the numbers to be smack dab in the middle of the correct range.

Weeks and weeks went by of taking different types of antibiotics with no effect. And finally I said no.

I said no, because I am quite alright with the bacteria in my urine.
I am not alright with exposing my body and all of its microbes to different antibiotics that kill off healthy bacteria.

Maybe some of my readers will disagree with this, maybe they take everything the doctor prescribes, but maybe, just maybe, the doctors aren't always prescribing antibiotics as they should. Maybe some doctors are too antibiotic-happy?