Must Read US Doctors Are Hearing the Zebra Hoofs

[Illini Warrior]

"When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras."

"That was one of the gems that Dr. Steve shared in his off-grid medicine course. It's something taught to all students in medical school. And what is means is this: Common things happen commonly. The child in the waiting room is more likely to have an ear infection than appendicitis. The young adult is more likely to have type-2 diabetes than a gunshot.

Which brings us back to the problem with zebras. For a very long time the US, figuratively, has been a nation of horses treated by horse doctors, horse doctors that have been trained to treat only horses. Not zebras. Even though zebras bear some physical resemblance, there are significant differences. Because the zebras carry some vastly different diseases. And those diseases have symptoms and presentations that are quite similar to those for horses, but the treatments may be totally different. The horse doctors might have read about these zebra diseases, but they have never seen them.

Unfortunately, many of those hoof beats in the distance are in fact coming from zebras. Most physicians in US have never seen the actual zebras making a comeback and crossing our borders."

https://prepschooldaily.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-problem-with-zebras.html

 

[DrHenley]

"When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras."

Add malaria to the list.

 

[bigpaul]

malaria has been around for a long time, my first father in law had it back in the mid 60s.

 

[GaRp58]

CDS and Hydroxychloroquine fix malaria and yellow fever too...

 

[DrHenley]

I believe I had malaria back in the mid 1970s. It didn't occur to me at the time but years later I was describing my weird symptoms to a doctor and he said I probably had malaria but it went undiagnosed because no doctors in the US were looking for malaria and they had never seen it before.
I never really found out what the diagnosis was because I was so out of it and don't remember anything that happened in the days following. All I remember is that I suddenly came down with an extremely high fever on a dinner date, had to have my date drive me home - the doctor met me at home (they still made house calls back then). I couldn't even sit up straight in the car and had to lie down on the car seat. When I got home I remember my piss was black, and then I passed out and the rest is blank.

 

[GaRp58]

If you had dark or even black urine, then you probably had malaria and it was causing negative effects on your liver and it was sending blood to your kidneys which was causing the darkness of the urine. Here is something from Wikipedia about the treatments too:

The recommended treatment for malaria is a combination of antimalarial medications that includes artemisinin. The second medication may be either mefloquine, lumefantrine, or sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine.[12] Quinine, along with doxycycline, may be used if artemisinin is not available.[12] It is recommended that in areas where the disease is common, malaria is confirmed if possible before treatment is started due to concerns of increasing drug resistance.[2] Resistance among the parasites has developed to several antimalarial medications; for example, chloroquine-resistant P. falciparum has spread to most malarial areas, and resistance to artemisinin has become a problem in some parts of Southeast Asia.[2]

 

[DrHenley]

Whatever the doctor did, it worked. I just have no memory at all of anything afterwards. I did get recurring fevers once a year after that for a number of years. I kept meaning to ask that doctor about it, but he died a few years ago and my parents are both dead, so there is nobody to ask now.