How About Italian for Dinner

Sometimes I think we don't give our patients enough credit. To read about all the woo on the web, you'd think that patients are in our offices every day demanding all kinds of alternative remedies when in fact, there are times when it's the woo-mongers trying to force it down their throats -- and other orifices.

I saw a very nice lady with a vaginal yeast infection the other day. Vaginitis with candida albicans, the typical "yeast infection," consists of an intensely itchy, thick white curd-like discharge that, it is sometimes noted, smells like bread. Technically, it smells like bread dough. Why? Because both contain yeast.

I offered the lady medical treatment, which she accepted gratefully after telling me a story about a previous practitioner who had suggested the following regimen:

Peel several cloves of garlic and wrap them in cheesecloth. Pound the crap out of them with a mallet or other similar implement, and then insert the whole mess into the vagina.

Suffice it to say, the patient's preference was for Western medicine; that is to say, real medicine.

But it did get me to thinking that a woman who tried that particular remedy would probably just end up with a discharge that smelled like garlic bread.



(In conjunction with this post, I wonder how Coke wold taste with garlic bread; if you didn't happen to have a nice red wine on hand, that is.)