Monday +119 (What's Your Line?) Evening Update

They removed Jackie's central line late this afternoon and switched her to oral antibiotics. She will be on a fairly high dose of Bacterim for a week. They don't plan on any more blood cultures at this point. We have an appointment with the transplant doc and infectious disease doc tomorrow afternoon. I think they will clear us for a return to Pryor.

It is interesting to note how the Internet is a great leveler. Since the bacterial infection Jackie picked up is rare the nurses and physician's assistant didn't know much about it. They did the same thing I did. They jumped on the Internet and did some quick research. Both declared it "BAD". In fact the PA must have read the same web page I read because she remarked the bacteria had been reclassified from Pseudomonas. What she failed to do was read the rest of the page and see that it rarely caused significant problems in humans. If you are a tomato plant, the bacteria is BAD news.

If we had listened to the nurse and PA we would have believed the worst about the infection. Since they declared it BAD Jackie was worried sick in spite of the fact that I was telling her not to worry. What could I know? I'm not a doctor! Once the nurses and PA consulted with the transplant doc and the infectious disease doc they realized it wasn't really so BAD. They only realized this when the got the order to pull Jackie's central line and put her on oral antibiotics.

I guess my point is the Internet can make anyone an instant expert on anything...if you use it! I can assure you the husband of the lady on her 3rd transplant is more of an expert on her disease than any oncologist in Tulsa, OK. Why? Because he has spent the last 6 months reading everything on the web regarding the disease. He's the true expert! Not the guy that spent 8 years in med school. Granted, he may not know a thing about setting a broken leg or performing breast enhancement surgery; but for MML he would be my go-to-guy!

In the past people attended institutes of higher education because they were repositories of knowledge. The colleges had vast libraries of books for the incoming students with "skulls full of mush" to use to fill their heads with knowledge. The Internet now decentralizes the library of knowledge. In 30 or 40 years will we need higher institutes of learning? I don't think so!