BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids unbelievable!

Good grief - that's amazing - if you're sick enough to be in an emergency room, there's a fair chance a cold or the flu on top of your other problems, might just finish you off....

lol i wish that was the case...but in the lovely little "free healthcare" location that I work with..most of what we get is just cold's and flu's that walk into the ER....

...some nights I pray for a trauma...


Skeeter

In Australia we have Medicare - some surgeries bulk bill Medicare, which means their patients receive free health care. Others charge a fee and you receive a percentage back from Medicare.
My Doctor charges $45 and after the rebate,the consultation costs me about $20.
My Dr told me that she used to work in a clinic that bulk billed and they were always frantically busy - she left as she didn't feel she could give her patients the time they needed with the constant demands on her time - she said some patients turned up a few times a week for all sorts of trivial ailments. She heard that the Clinic decided to change its policy and charge a fee - the number of patients dropped by about 40%...
She felt that free health care usually meant people overused the system.

I have to agree--a germ is a germ is a germ. If you are sick, don't go to work. If your kid is sick, do not send them to daycare or school to spread the germs around. Stay home and get better!

My BIL's girlfriend brought their sick 4 year old to Thanksgiving dinner. My neice had a 101*F fever and had been vomiting for 3 days. Thankfully, she must have been past the contageous stage because none of us got sick.

2 years ago at Christmas, my husband and I went to his big family Christmas party. A bunch of the kids at the party were sick (colds, stomach flu, etc.). So of course, my husband and I were sick for about 2 weeks after coming into contact with these kids. Grrrr......

I remember when my nephew was in daycare - he was literally sick like every week. They all keep getting sick and passing it back and forth to each other. What a mess! When I was out with my friend and her daughter the other day, her daughter was like putting her mouth on the Chik-Fil-A counter while we were ordering food! Ewww! Another reason I can't have kids...I can't deal with all the gross stuff they touch, put their mouths on, etc. Or they touch gross things, and then put their hands in their mouth. I can't watch that.

You've touched on a really important point, though. Parents that aren't acting like adults and taking their sick kids along because they will miss out. It's like what we see at coffee shops and other places now. And then there are the parents that don't like disciplining so they skip that part and the rest of us suffer b/c their kids are abominable. The irony is, we know we don't want to take on the all encompassing job of parenting, and to get stuck doing this stuff. But parents don't think about what is involved, and then pick and choose what parenting they want to do. Missing out on stuff when your kids are sick is part of the territory.

I know a set of parents that are constantly sick themselves b/c of their son. Fun! It must be nice to have a living germ factory in your home. And that's another way parents probably miss more time from work than we do. If they aren't sick, their kids are. I'm starting to understand why employers would prefer to hire a CF person!

Hand washing is the biggest deterrent to germs and illness. The hand sanitizers are great alternatives to use in and out of the house. Sneezing & coughing into your elbow and NOT into your hand prevents germs from being passed from hands to phones, toilet handles,elevator buttons, LIGHT SWITCHES, key boards, door knobs, etc.
[b]



Some of the germiest places have nothing to do with whether or not you have kids.

Quote:

YOUR KITCHEN SINK
�Kitchen sinks are dirtier than most bathrooms,� says Kelly Reynolds, PhD, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona. There are typically more than 500,000 bacteria per square inch in the drain. In fact, in a recent study, half of the top 10 germiest spots in the home were (gulp!) in the kitchen. That sponge you use to clean the counter? Crawling with bacteria, as are the sink�s basin and faucet handles.

Quote:

ATM MACHINES
If you�re not careful, you might pick up more than quick cash from your local ATM. Those buttons have more gunk on them than most public-bathroom doorknobs. (The same goes for vending-machine buttons, bus armrests, and escalator handrails.) After testing 38 ATMs in downtown Taipei, Chinese researchers recently found that each key contained, on average 1,200 germs. �ATMs aren�t frequently cleaned, and they are regularly touched�a perfect combination for a lot of germs,� environmental microbiologist Kelly Reynolds, PhD, says.

Quote:

WOMEN'S PURSES
Your Marc Jacobs? Dirty? Yep. Think petri dish. When University of Arizona professor of environmental microbiology Charles Gerba, PhD, and his team tested women�s purses not long ago, they found that most had tens of thousands of bacteria on the bottom and a few were overrun with millions. Another study found bugs like pseudo-monas (which can cause eye infections), and skin-infection-causing staphylococcus bacteria, as well as salmonella and E. coli. Your makeup case is every bit as bad, as are your guy�s wallet and personal digital assistant.

Quote:

Mats and machines at health clubs
�I see a yoga mat, and I worry,� says Elizabeth Scott, PhD, who has found antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus on yoga mats and cardio and resistance machines.

Quote:

Your bathtub
Shocking, but true: The place you go to get clean is quite dirty. In a recent study, Elizabeth Scott, PhD, found staphylococcus bacteria, a common cause of serious skin infections, in 26 percent of the tubs she tested, as compared with just 6 percent of garbage cans. Tubs typically had more than 100,000 bacteria per square inch! �It makes sense when you think about it,� she says. �You�re washing germs and viruses off your body. The tub is a fairly moist environment, so bacteria can grow.�

Your washer!

Quote:

Your office phone
This is enough to make you dial 911: Office phones often have more than 25,000 germs per square inch, and your desk, computer keyboard, and mouse aren�t far behind. �Phones, including cell phones, can be pretty gross; they get coated with germs from your mouth and hands,� says Robert Donofrio, PhD. Although we�d like to think of ourselves as cleaner than guys, women�s offices have twice the number of bacteria (but men�s are slightly more likely to harbor antiobiotic-resistant staphylococcus). In fact, Gerba calls desks �bacteria cafeterias,� because of all the food particles he found there. Most common office areas�kitchens, copiers�are not as dirty as individual desks, although the microwave is pretty bad.

Your cell phone and home computer keyboard and mouse!!!



Always wash your hands BEFORE eating. Also, if you reuse your water bottles, they need to be washed with soap and hot water and once per week rinsed with a mild bleach and water mixture and completely air dried. Water bottles being reused over and over harbor tons of bacteria.

use your elbow to push elevator buttons and push open doors.

Ok I will stop now...lol! I could go on all day and night!

To read the full article I quoted from:
The Germiest Places in America

I was told in HK to beware of money - paper notes.
Often the notes you receive in change, can be quite dirty.
During the SARS scare I used my credit card and avoided handling the money altogether.

Thanks for the info Erika. I've gotten much more paranoid about touching things in public after reading things like that.

I agree that germs come from many places that have nothing to do with children, but some of these things do have to do with children. We can't all be imagining that kids get sick more often than adults, and pass things around in school and day care that then get transmitted to their parents.

This discussion reminded of a blog post I read recently, and sorry to torture you all, but I had to track it down for you...(I've changed the name because I'm not sure if it's okay to pull a quote like this from someone's blog). She has been sick and writing posts like this for a couple months since her child has been going to more kid-activities:

Yep, another cold/flu thing going round these parts. I have a head full of snot and lovely spiking fevers, and "Baby" is wandering about giving the animals snot-filled kisses. It's adorable, in a disgusting kind of way. You can see where she's been by following the snot trail.

Luckily, she has embraced "blowing" her own nose, meaning she accepts a kleenex which she then happily rubs all over her face. This has led to a charming glaze of snot covering her entire face that I, frankly, feel too sick to bother washing off repeatedly.

I just have to think that my house, even though we're not anal about housecleaning, would be less germy than this family's house! We go out in public every day and don't get sick, but get around a group of kids and it always seems to happen.

Also, there is this whole controversy about the over-sanitization that happens nowadays with the strong cleaners people use trying to eradicate every germ. Maybe it's okay to have some germs in our environment, and helps us as children and adults develop our immune systems.

YIKES!!!

Honestly frieda I am totally squicked out by this lady's blog! Why can't she be bother to wash her baby's face? What else can she not be "bothered" to do?

I'm feeling queasy now!