We're going to a place where malaria thrives, so all the people expected to go ashore are taking prophylactic doxycycline. It's no problem, I've been on the stuff for months at a time.

Sure, the label says it can cause sun sensitivity and rashes, but no one I know had a problem. Until now. Within a day of his start, poor LCpl Drews looked like a smallpox case. He had hives all over his torso. It looked nasty and apparently itched like crazy. So they switched him to quinine, and he's slathering himself with some skin cream until the swelling goes away. Poor guy.

I to have some new drugs, but I'm happier about these. I've had a fungal infection under the nail bed on my left big toe for a year now. To get meds for it, the military policy is that there has to be a positive culture from the stuff. (Apparently it's an expensive drug, about a thousand dollars per patient; and there are signs of resistant fungi developing in the wild.) Getting a positive culture was problem, because it's tough to culture nail bed fungal infections: if they liked to live exposed to air on petri dishes, then they wouldn't live in the nail bed. So I couldn't get a script to cure it, and it kept getting worse.

The squadron flight surgeon finally came through for me, and he argued the pharmacist around. So now I've got the three-month series of pills that should clear it up. Yay.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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