Assuming one had such a sympathetic doctor, a supply of cephalexin, suture kits/locals.... What else would you recommend - particularly in the way of antibiotics?
You don’t need a doctor to get antibiotics.
Www.fishmoxflex.com
All of the basics available for discreet shipping right to your door. No prescription needed. And they’re made in exactly the same factories and subject to all the same quality standards as the products intended for human consumption.
A few points, in addition to the online access to meds others have listed above:
I am of the opinion that surviving SHTF is unlikely in isolation. Neighborhoods should work together, and most neighborhoods have at least a few people with a bit of medical training of some sort. Coordinating efforts and resources ahead of time seems prudent to me.
The general person would do best to get a Merck Manual or some such book and study up on such things. Ball park diagnoses of common conditions in an emergency situation is the best we can do, and you can learn a lot with reasonable effort on your own - I did so out at sea on a small ship - an “independent duty station” where I acted without availability of a doctor much of the time. When I went on to medical school years later I was amazed how well I had been able to handle many illnesses with so little training. I’d save such heroics for true emergencies during SHTF, of course, but that’s what we’re talking about here.
There are tons of fancy antibiotics out there, but most have been developed to treat highly/increasingly resistant infections in debilitated patients in hospital settings. When SHTF, things will get rather primitive rather quickly, and the bacteria that will kill you will most likely be the garden varieties that have always been out there, and which are likely reverted back to less resistant strains. Common antibiotics should work fine.
When SHTF, you can forget about treating opportunistic infections in debilitated people with compromised immune systems: Triage - a hard lesson that must be learned and learned well - will be the name of the game. Such people have so little chance of your saving them that resources will need to be saved for those with more reasonable chances of living. “Death panels”? - you bet. And you may be the panel some day. I think harsh, brutal realities are headed our way if this all falls apart. Read up on how it was done in the old days, the attitudes and the specifics.
Biological warfare plagues, if bacterial, will usually respond to Doxycycline.
Forget about IV or IM antibiotics unless you’ve got some way to preserve them and administer them.
I’d get the following meds if I knew as much as or somewhat less than I did back when I was a corpsman. Some are cheap, some not.
Lots of triple antibiotic ointment for small wounds - OTC.
Several large bottles of silver sulfadiazine ointment for long term treatment of serious burns.
The rest are in order of probable usefulness, and somewhat in descending order of cost most likely.
Keflex.
Erythromycin
Bactrim.
Amoxicillin/ Augmentin.
Ampicillin
Doxycycline
Cipro
Metronidazole
Clindamycin
You might want at least a little bit of Azithromycin and Tamiflu around, but bulk is harder to get and they are rather pricey last I checked.
Some non-steroidal antibiotic eye ointments are also worth stockpiling.
Regarding “expiration dates” on meds - it’s a long story why, but the bottom line is that they won’t become “dangerous” by degrading into some sort of poison over time, and most will still be effective long, long after they “expire”.
Last point: Prevention of wounds, proper wound care, and prevention of illnesses through common sense measures is the real key. You simply don’t want to be using antibiotics in the first place if you can help it at all, especially if you don’t have the diagnostic ability to accurately diagnose the infections you’re treating. Common sense stuff.
Good luck.