Life Savers
JOIN THE CHAT about issues of the day on our Facebook page: facebook.com/northandsouthnz. We welcome your views while keeping you up with North & South news. For more stories from the North & South team, see NOTED.co.nz. To sign up for a fortnightly email newsletter from North & South, go to bit. ly/northandsouthedm.
PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE
Donna Chisholm’s excellent cover story The War Against Infection: Superbugs v Super Drugs (June) about increasing resistance to antibiotics will concern any cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, especially anyone who is neutropenic as a result of their treatment or of their disease.
A patient with inadequate numbers of neutrophils – ie neutropenic – is a prime target for opportunistic infections that can overwhelm a body’s defences.
Consequently, chemotherapy patients are advised to present themselves promptly at an A&E clinic if their temperature goes over 38°C.
As a cancer patient myself, who has had to scoot up to A&E a few times with a rip-roaring temperature and be checked to make sure I wasn’t developing sepsis, the
