Antibiotics

Eddie's doctor thinks that he has an ear infection, which probably caused his fever this week.  So he prescribed antibiotics.  Of course, this was right after I was at a talk last weekend about the effects that bacteria in your intestines have on your mental state.  It turns out that the presence of certain bacteria in the guts of mice make them more exploratory, while other bacteria (which are present in breastfeeding baby mice) make the mice calmer.  Some bad bacteria (C. diff), if present in large numbers, are correlated with schizophrenia and other mental disorders.  And there's been stuff in the paper about the impact of gut flora on depression and obesity. Taking antibiotics kills off lots of the gut bacteria, sometimes leaving C. diff alone to take over (very bad) but, in any case, changing the makeup of the gut flora.  The upshot is that whenever you take antibiotics, it has long-term effects on mental health which are not understood, but probably bad.

So I said "Well, geez, Eddie's never had antibiotics, I guess we should keep it that way!" Alas.

He gets big doses by mouth, out of a huge syringe.  He never minded taking medicine before (it's generally sweet), but with all the medicine and temperature measurements and things we've been doing to him this week, he wanted nothing to do with it.  We had to hold his hands and get the syringe in his mouth while he twisted away and screamed and spat it out: a torment in the morning and at bedtime.  Then last night I tried putting it on a spoon, and he took it with no problem, and even seemed eager for more!  This has continued today.  It is a huge relief, since we have about a week more of this stuff to get through!