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I learned this lesson through my boss who passed away awhile back after years of liver problems. If you want to survive complicate or life threatening health issues you need to learn as much as you can about what your treatment options are, which medicines are safe, at what dosage, and in what combinations.

My favorite story was his stopping a nurse from administering 700 units of a medicine that in that volume would have killed him. The doctor had written 200 but the bottom of the two landed on the line of the form near perfectly. Fortunately the nurse went to verify and he made it out that time



It's amazing that prescriptions are still being hand written these days.


It's amazing that my bank asks me to write amounts both longhand and in numerals when writing a check, even in amounts as small as a dollar, but that doctors scribbling out dosages of medications that can easily kill people has been standard operating procedure since the whole thing started.


Most hospitals now have computerized order entry now so they are not written by hand. Most prescriptions in private practice are also now computerized and sent electronically per federal mandates.




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