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View Full Version : Need reccomendation on good home healthcare book



daisymommy
12-09-2010, 12:16 PM
Accidentally posted this in the Bargains Forum. I'm re-posting here.

I need a recommendation for a good at-home health care and first-aid book (since we here at the BBB haven't written ours yet ;)). I need something non-alarmist, that puts some power into your hands, tells you when to go to the doctor, and is a bit more mainstream, but maybe will tell you to take Vitamin C and echinacea for a cold, etc.

This will be a gift for my brother and new sister in law. They are clueless really about things like this. She commented recently that she gets colds and flu often, and she was hoping she would be on brother's health insurence soon so she could go get antibiotics when she got sick. Ummm...really? Apparently she would always get antibiotics when she catches a cold or the flu. She just moved here from Canada. I know things aren't *that* different between our two countries, I think it must have just been her doctor. But that means now she is used to doing things that way.

So I spoke to them on the phone yesterday, they are both sick with what sounds to me like a cold, or maybe the flu, and she is upset because insurance hasn't kicked in, and she wants to go to the doctors to know what to do. She is talking about going to the walk-in health care clinic (to the tune of $150) and they are dirt poor right now. Sigh. I didn't want to get all preachy on the phone, but they need an education on how to treat common non-scary things at home.

FWIW...I have a couple of super great books here that I use, but it includes mainstream advice, as well as rec's for herbal medicine, homeopathic, etc.; and my brother thinks that's all quackery, so I'm sure he would just disregard the whole book.

I looked on Amazon at the American Medical Association home health care book, and it was so alarmist, it was ridiculous! Basically it said to call your doctor for EVERYTHING! It has a search function on Amamzon so you can read the whole book. If you have a cough, call your doctor, because you might have pneumonia! If you have the flu, call your doctor immediately, because people die of the flu! :rolleye0014: If you have a head ache, it might be a tumor! So yeah, not a book like this please!