Pills are the only source of instant health in the game. Even early game, as soon as you find pills, you should keep them in your quickbar. Same thing with bandages. Cloth isn't hard to find and you should never leave the house without at least a stack, especially if you're going melee.
This was my go-to setup on my last game.
Antibiotics, Club (Main weapon), Sledge (breaking stuff), First aid bandages, bandages, food, coffee, medkit if you have any, pills, and then beer, honey, forged iron, iron for the club, repair kits if you use guns etc.
Leaving the base without all of that stuff had a high likelyhood of making me end up dead. Over prepare, it'll save your life.
With that said, I started a new game recently, looted a new dungeon POI that had a feral as the boss (On day 2), almost kicked my butt but I managed to survive that, and enjoyed some neat loot. Then I prepared better and looted an identical house next door and got my ass kicked by not one but three ferals as the bosses.
On day 3.
Welp =\
One feral I could take, I had plenty of shotgun, arrows and hunting rifle munitions but 3 ferals on day 3 hidden in a corner when I expected 1 is not very nice.