Most people dread the cold months if only because they tend to catch at least one illness during them. This is usually because people cluster together indoors to avoid the cold, and germs spread easily from one person to the next. If you develop a fever during these cold months, you should get to an urgent care facility right away. Here's why.
Same Day Care
Urgent care facilities are set up to handle most non-emergency health scenarios, like the common cold, minor injuries, and so on. It's typically easier to be seen by an urgent care facility for a same-day problem than a doctor's office, as doctors often book up days or even weeks in advance. In addition, many doctor's offices slap a same-day appointment fee onto your bill, which could leave your wallet feeling as badly as you do right now. Instead, head to your local urgent care facility.
Flu Symptoms
The reason that a fever is important enough to see a doctor for right away is that it's often one of the first signs that a person is getting the flu.
The flu is a serious problem and is responsible for taking about 80,000 lives last year. Even if you get a flu vaccine when you should, it's not necessarily enough to protect you. Flu strains change rapidly and mutate, which means that what you have might not be something your immune system was prepared for by the vaccine. However, that doesn't mean that you're doomed to live out the flu.
Treatment Options
Getting to the urgent care facility as fast as possible is necessary because this is your window of opportunity. Medicine has come a long way over the years, and now it's possible to provide patients with medication to combat the flu so long as you get into the doctor's office in your first few days of symptoms — the earlier, the better.
These medications, like Tamiflu, work on nearly all flu strains. They help your body to fight off the infection, and while they're not a cure for the flu, they can often dramatically reduce the amount of time that you have the flu, how long you're contagious, and how severe your symptoms are. With early care and treatment, you can potentially avoid a week or more of feeling terribly sick or even ending up in the hospital because of extreme symptoms.
The flu is a serious problem that needs to be treated as fast as possible. If you ever suspect that you or a loved one could be showing signs of the flu, seek help from your local urgent care facility as quickly as possible. Doing so could make a huge impact on how you feel in the days to come and how much of a health threat the flu will pose to you.
Share