In my country, most patients are provided antibiotics when they get sick including cold, flu, sore throat. This has made my philosophy about antibiotic as a common medicine for these diseases which is wrong. When I was 18, I got a strep infection caused by streptococcal bacteria. My classmate spread the strep infection to me because I sat next to her. At the beginning, I thought that she got some common coughs. The infections made my throat and tonsils irritated, swollen, painful, and inflamed without coughing. My mouth had some road spots, and I had a hard time to swallow food. I didn’t go to any doctor and waited to recover by drinking water, but my situation got worse. Later, when I met a doctor, he said that I got strep infection, a kind of bacterial infections. He recommended me to use antibiotics such s penicillin, cephalexin, and amoxicillin, for I got many days in being infected. I asked him about the antibiotic, and he explained to me different situations for use of antibiotics which treat only infections caused by bacteria, not any viruses. And people shouldn’t use antibiotic for cold and flu if they are from viruses. Also, bacterial resistance becomes harder to treat if people use antibiotic too often or wrong way. I followed exactly my doctor’s instruction in taking antibiotic, and I recover around 2 weeks later. From that point, my philosophy about antibiotic change completely which antibiotics are used to treat specific infections from bacteria. It was so interesting to learn about antibiotics and how to use them wisely and usefully.
