Bloody Antibiotics

[davidgillon]

So the Fluocloxacillin says "Take on an empty stomach, an hour before food, or two hours after food".

I'm taking it four times a day, my day has become "Well, if I don't eat now, even though I'm not hungry, then I'll not be able to take a pill until an hour after I finally  get around to eating, but if I do eat now, then I can't take the pills for two hours." I actually ended up being awake until 4:30AM just to try and fit in yesterday's fourth dose, and today has completely upset my stomach through not being able to eat when my stomach was saying I needed to.

Grrr! Thank god it's only a week's course!

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I HEAR YOU.

[davidgillon]

I did think 'Oh, Rachel's going to think I'm a complete wimp for that winge' ;)

[shehasathree]

Ugh. Do you know what the reasoning behind that instruction is?

(I ask bc I have had some drugs where it mattered a lot and some where it turns out that the whole "half an hour before, or more than two hours after food" thing didn't actually matter, in terms of effectiveness and side-effects. Apparently taking Salofalk with food will slow down - but not reduce - absorption. Since it's something I take every day, that matters not one jot. I spent years of my life stressing unnecessarily about an instruction that was making my life quite difficult, which turned out not to matter!

I know with antibiotics it's often more about side-effects/absorption/keeping a continual supply in the bloodstream. But if e.g. you knew it was definitely about side effects, you could play around with it a bit more (plus figure out what exactly fulfills the "food" function in this case). Whereas if it's about keeping a continual supply in the bloodstream, then taking it on a regular schedule obviously becomes more important.)

[davidgillon]

It really doesn't say, just that sentence about on an empty stomach.

OTOH, checking the notes again I noticed a line I'd skipped over: 'bone and heart infection' - nah, that's not me, but if the other option is 'surgical prophylaxis' then actually it is closest tp my situation, even if it's a soft tissue infection not bone (or at least I hope it is) and I'm taking double the dosage. And that line says 6-8 hours apart, whereas I'd just been trying to divide them equally through the waking day, which ends up being a lot closer together. I'm just not precisely sure how to make that work with my irregular hours.

On the plus side, infected toe doesn't seem so outright throbby today! Not that it's been desperately painful anyway. I think new GP was surprised I wasn't making an issue over pain until I reminded her I'm on opiates so it has to go some before I'm going to notice it at all.

[davidgillon]

I did some googling and found a page that said it and another penicillin variant are "less acid range sensitive than many penicillins" and if it's causing gastric upsets because of empty stomach then you cab compromise on the timings. So while I'm trying to follow the guidelines I'm not being quite so fanatical about it.

[shehasathree]

\o/

[rmc28]

Been there, done that *sympathy*

[untonuggan]

i hate those. they could DIAF except apparently they are needed. dammit.

sympathies.