“My doctor is going to eat his shoe and I won’t have much sympathy.”
I love that line. I had a patient who was traveling to a Northeastern state when she became ill with COVID. She has a number of risk factors including history of immunological conditions and rheumatologist problems for which she sees a rheumatologist. After speaking with her and her husband I elected to treat her by having her go to a major teaching facility where she was after I called them and requested they assess her and give her Monoclonal antibodies (upon their approval of course.). Also prescribed the cocktail of Zinc, Vit. D, Vit C, Pepcid and Ivermectin. She improved over about 36-48 hours and following appropriate quarantine period was able to return to her home town. She followed up with her rheumatologist who then asked her what she took for her Covid. When she told him she had been prescribed the Ivermectin as well as the above supplements and antibody treatments, he became apoplectic. He apparently called me every name in the book and suggested he should “report him to the medical board.” Intimated that my treatment was likely to cause her injury and/or death. Well, she fired that arrogant rheumatologist immediately after that visit !!
As far as supply and dispensing of the medication went, I had to call 4 pharmacies in that city to find one that would actually dispense it to her, despite the fact that is a FDA approved medication. One chain pharmacy told me they had a directive NOT to dispense it, another claimed they didn’t have it, one got into an argument with me about “off-label” prescribing (which is a very common practice for multiple conditions and is perfectly legal.)
If I were so lucky to have a common sense doctor as you, I would be much more at ease. I have come across nurse practitioners who have educated themselves but my experience with local doctors is they don’t want to even talk about vitamin or early treatment options.