Don’t Be Afraid to Question Your Doctor

Warning: this post will be only tangentially about knees.

First, I was going to write about crashing my bike last week. I went down hard at 25 miles an hour after the guy in front of me braked hard and our wheels brushed, and I ended up bouncing and sliding on the pavement. My goodness, the litany of injuries: road rash on my face, swelling over one cheekbone, sprained wrist and finger, scrape on one forearm, bruising on my hip, and then knees banged up with cuts on both and a little swelling on the right one.

I was fully clothed, this being winter, yet still the crash was violent enough that I had bloody rashes under my garments. But the upshot: a week later, I’m in pretty decent shape, and the two knees feel pretty good (the scabs aren’t pretty, but they’ll go away soon). I’m a healer! :)

So that was going to be the post, then my daughter caught the flu, and my wife called me yesterday from the pharmacy to say she had bought Tamiflu for both Joelle (7) and Elliot (three and a half). Elliot didn’t have the flu, so he would be given the Tamiflu in a prophylactic way – to hopefully lessen his chances of contracting the virus.

It cost a heckuva lot -- $78, and that’s reduced from $600 with no insurance. But something else was sticking in my mind as I got off the phone with her. Tamiflu ... Tamiflu ... hmm, what do I know about Tamiflu?

I started poking around on the internet, and immediately started getting a bad feeling about this drug. It sounded a bit controversial. It also sounded like it was of uncertain efficacy. And one side effect I found rather chilling: “neuro-psychiatric events.” So kids can have nightmares, insomnia, delusions. Those aren’t typical side effects of say aspirin or Ibuprofen.

Now for those of you who don’t know me well, let me be clear. I’m not some nutter when it comes to medicine. I’m not anti-vaccine. I’m pro flu shot. I try to keep an open mind, and always consider the scientific evidence and the statistical likelihood of outcomes.

And I have loads of respect for well-run scientific studies. I’ve cited the Cochrane Collaboration before, as they tend to do “meta-analysis,” sifting through a wide range of studies for the best ones, and then combining all the findings to reach a conclusion. Here’s what they reportedly had to say in the BMJ in 2014 on Tamiflu (underscoring is mine):

Compared with a placebo, taking Tamiflu led to a quicker alleviation of influenza-like symptoms of just half a day (from 7 days to 6.3 days) in adults, but the effect in children was more uncertain. There was no evidence of a reduction in hospitalizations or serious influenza complications; confirmed pneumonia, bronchitis, sinusitis or ear infection in either adults or children. Tamiflu also increased the risk of nausea and vomiting in adults by around 4 percent and in children by 5 percent. There was a reported increased risk of psychiatric events of around 1 percent when Tamiflu was used to prevent influenza.

That “psychiatric events” warning bothers me. Now, taken literally, an increase of pyschiatric events of 1 percent may not be much at all. As in, say that among 10,000 people with the flu, there are normally 100 “psychiatric events.” On its face, this statement implies that there would be 101 among Tamiflu takers, an increase of one in a population of 10,000. Not much to worry about there, right? Hardly even statistically significant.

Yes, seemingly, but – the nightmares and delusions appear to have a long anecdotal tail when it comes to Tamiflu. Japan banned its use for teens after a couple of suicides and other incidents, including some kid running into traffic. Now, a hundred anecdotes don’t make a statistic, and it could be just some bad batches of Tamiflu, or the kid was going to dart into traffic anyway – but it is a little disconcerting that these cases pop up with some frequency on the internet.

What’s Tamiflu doing in the brain anyway, you fledgling biologists might wonder. Isn’t there this thing called a brain-blood barrier that effectively blocks most chemicals from crossing into the seat of our reasoning mind? Apparently, Tamiflu normally can’t cross the channel. But when the tissue is inflamed, as with a flu, the barrier may become more permeable.

May be. Perhaps. Some incidents. Anecdotes. This isn’t hard science. Hell, I’d the first to admit that I haven’t done a helluva lot of research. But I did call the doctor who prescribed it. Once upon a time, before my knee pain saga, I never would’ve done such a thing. But I’m a bit bolder now. Doctors don’t always get things right. So I asked her reasoning for prescribing this drug.

She explained that she presented it as an option; she didn’t recommend it. She was very nice the whole time we spoke. My tone was perhaps a touch less friendly. But something she said surprised me: A mother had called her office that very day saying her daughter was taking Tamiflu and having delusions. The doctor, thank goodness, told her to take the child off the drug. (Full disclosure: she did say it was the first case of delusions directly reported to her in 14 years of practicing.)

In the end, I told my wife that it was partly her decision too whether to give it to the kids. Me, I wouldn’t. I’m ready to put the whole $78 of the stuff right out on the doorstep, if someone else wants to roll the dice with it. This anti-viral medicine seems to be powerful stuff. I don’t like giving my kids stuff that powerful unless they absolutely need it.

My daughter had a temperature of 104.7 yesterday. Today it’s about 101 and going down. I think she’s going to be fine.