The doctor's office just told me that they were not allowed to call in

[Ms. Toad]

133. Because bacterial infections result from a specific exposure to a specific bacteria.

And they need to be diagnosed (preferably by a culture) to determine the proper antibiotic to treat the specific bacteria causing the infection.

They are not (as a general rule) part of a repeated pattern of vulnerability. (There are some rare circumstances when they are - my daughter had what appeared to be repeated bouts of cellulitis. We were specifically trained by her infectious disease doc what symptoms to look for and how to track the progress of the infection. Even so, and even though when we showed up at the ER with one of these bouts, we were ushered in ahead of anyone who didn't have a bone fracture sticking through their skin - they are that serious - her doctor (one of the top in the field NEVER suggested we start antibiotics without him laying eyes his own eyes (or the eyes of trained clinicians) on the hot spot before starting antibiotics.

Believe me - cellulitis is far more immediately serious than bronchitis - yet this specialist in infectious disease, who became very confident in my ability to recognize what we all believed was a bacterial infection - and which (unlike respiratory infections is almost never viral), would never have prescribed an antibiotic sight unseen.

And - the kicker - even with this doctor (and at least two other ER doctors) diagnosing it as cellulitis (almost always bacterial, and quickly life threatening), and watching it "respond" to antibiotics in exactly the same way a bacterial infection should have, it turns out it wasn't bacterial. Which we discovered after about 3 years of treating repeated hot spots as bacterial - when a new hot spot developed while she was already on antibiotics.

So - yes. Even when you have what appears to be a repeated pattern of vulnerability over time, you need to be seen (and preferably cultured) by a medical professional before antibiotics are administered. (In our case cultures were not an option, without a surgical biopsy, which we had near the end of the period of repeated "infections" which resulted in a diagnosis that she had vasculitis, which can mimic cellulitis even to the eyes of a trained professional).