Medical testing equipment & supplies

[PrairieBelle22]

I am looking and a variety of medical testing equipment and supplies to add to my preps. Of course some of these are preps that likely will be used regularly or at least from time to time. Some are simple and some are more complex.

I'm just wondering what all you have in this department. How do you plan to diagnose illness if you don't have access to a hospital or the doctor? What about maintenance blood testing? I'd hate to get to age 55 and have a heart attach because I didn't know that my cholesterol was raging high for the previous 10 years.

Here is my starter equipment list: (related to illness rather than wound)
Oral thermometer
rectal thermometer
basal thermometer
stethoscope
sphygmomanometer (blood pressure)
cholesterol test unit (& related supplies)
thyroid tsh test unit (& related supplies)
glucometer (& related supplies)
considering other illness test kits...several are available
Medical encyclopedia (considering one published in Europe as well)

supplies:
masks
eye protection
gloves

Looking forward to learning about your experiences in this area. Thank you,
Belle

[7thswan]

Blood pressure machine comes in handy. As you age, your Dr. may suggest you check it everyday and write it down. Mine is always high when I go to the dr. so it dosen't count, I have to take it at home.
I have the proper supplies to sew someone up.
Oxcygen tank +mask.
Epi pen for allergic reactions.
Eye wash
Wrap that sticks to it's self ,like Vetwrap.
Special medicine for burns and covering. One good med is Silver Sulfadiazine cream.
Along with the Ency. Get cards, one sided laminate, that show what to do for chokeing,stoke symtoms ect. Put them where everyone has to look at them when bored. That corner the kids use for punishment, the bathroom ect.

[unregistered29228]

I'd also add a box of strep tests - they "expire" in a year or so, but I've kept them in controlled temps for 3-4 years. And I recently bought a box of mono tests. Our son had mono and I wanted to know if/when any of the rest of us caught it. So far nobody has, but it's so easy to use a lancet, get a drop of blood, and know for sure.

Also an ear scope - to see if there's a foreign body or infection. And a box of tongue depressors - They're great for looking in throats, but they are also good splints with the vet wrap you mentioned.

[wagvan]

Pregnancy tests?

[Pelenaka]

Amazon carries a kit to type blood handy if you were gonna give a transfusion.

Working on making a DIY non-electric nebulizer (asmatics) from a tire pump.

I also stock urine test strips for keytones in addition to glucometer. Along that line recently found a website which described how to make a centrifuge using a salad spinner. End goal is insulin but a centrifuge is needed to test blood iron amts.

There is also a test strip for urinary tract infection but you can as easily dx. a UTI by examining the urine - cloudy, dark colored, foul odor ect.

There's a book on Amazon - Medical Tests You Can Do At Home DIY (something like that) it's on my wish list. Another book is Civil War Medical Instruments.

[Vosey]

I was also going to suggest a glucometer. If you develop diabetes there's a lot you can do with diet and exercise to bring down your blood sugars. On the other hand, there may not be much to do about cholesterol if you're in a long term SHTF situation.

Both home cholesterol and thyroid tests are notoriously inaccurate. If you are buying "point of care" tests as they are called in the medical field they get really expensive. I'd look at "what am I going to do with this knowledge?". If there's not much you can do about it then don't spend the money.

[margoC]

Originally Posted by Vosey

I was also going to suggest a glucometer. If you develop diabetes there's a lot you can do with diet and exercise to bring down your blood sugars. On the other hand, there may not be much to do about cholesterol if you're in a long term SHTF situation.

Both home cholesterol and thyroid tests are notoriously inaccurate. If you are buying "point of care" tests as they are called in the medical field they get really expensive. I'd look at "what am I going to do with this knowledge?". If there's not much you can do about it then don't spend the money.

Medical technologist/microbiogist here. I would be wary of strep kits that are expired for years as well.

There aren't too many lab tests that you can do at home. Glucose seems to be the most useful, if you have the means to treat it. If you are diabetic you would of course have this stuff.

We run daily or even shift QC when we run tests. Daily, weekly, monthly and other maintenance are done on the instruments as well. We don't just slap a specimen on them and accept the results. Sometimes results are even questioned, rerun, and recollected.


You need to know more than one thyroid hormone to make a "diagnosis" then how would you treat it? If those tests were any good we would be using them in the lab instead of spending money on instruments, plus qc'ing them, and maintaining cap certification.

It's great to try and be self sufficient but recognize that there are limitations to being your own doctor.

[margoC]

I almost forgot to mention the most important thing. The strep screen tests are just that, a screen. If they are positive then fine, but most of them are negative.

We do follow up throat cultures on all negative strep screens, that where we catch most of the streps. Not sure about doctor offices, I work in a hospital laboratory in microbiology.

This is what group A strep (strep pyogenes, the one that causes the bad strep throat) looks like on a blood agar plate. This specimen was from a tissue culture, it's really bad when it gets into your tissues. There is a lot of normal flora in the throat, those plates don't look as pretty.




The clearing you see around the colony is called "hemolysis". Beta hemolysis to be exact.

There is more than one beta hemolytic strep that causes problems for people but strep pyogenes is the worst. That's also one of the "flesh eating bacteria" strains. A fireman had to have a limb amputated a couple years ago when a leg wound got infected. There isn't competition from normal flora when it get's into your tissues, those infections tend to be more serious. The organism secrets toxins which damage tissue and also hinder the ability of the white cells to get to the wound, which makes the organism grow even more. The damage to the tissues can make treatment difficult.

It's easily treated with any of the penicillins (unless it gets bad).