blindsquirrel.org

Daycare.  Pre-School.  Elementary School.  All of them are just giant petri dishes of sickness.  Colds, chicken pox, strep throat, etc.  I don’t know about your kids, but mine really dislike getting a throat culture done to test for Strep, plus it takes too long for the result.  I know they now have a rapid test, but in our case our HMO won’t pay for it because it is only 80% accurate or some other number that I could easily make up.

So here’s the invention idea - come up with a light that changes color when you shine it on someone’s throat.  White is clear, any other color (we’ll say red) means they have Strep.  Take it a step further and give us the option of purchasing one at our local Pharmacy.  Our own immediate, personal Strep Throat detector.

Seem impossible?  That’s probably what people thought when someone came up with the idea to take your temperature in 2 seconds through your ear.  Remember what that used to be like, sitting there with that thermometer in your mouth for 1 minute? Remember back before thermometers were oral?  Yikes!

My youngest daughter would rather lie about her throat hurting than deal with the swab to the back of the throat method that is used today, plus we need more immediate results.  My oldest was tested on a Friday.  Doctors seem to go by the policy that if they don’t call you everything is fine.  So we didn’t hear anything Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, so she went to school Monday.  Late in the day Monday the doctor called to tell us the results were positive, so we had to go get her out of class because Strep is contagious. Situations like that could have been avoided.

So please take this idea, steal it, patent it, become filthy rich off of it, but we need a better solution.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 7:08 am and is filed under Health.