There is has been a plague hovering over our house since mid-October. First, the daughter comes down with the creeping crud that causes the cough that sounds like a lung or parts of the lung are coming up, the sore throat and hoarse voice and copious amounts of snot that looks like it could be used as a green glue. She would cough so hard she caused herself to puke. Then this lovely illness passes to the husband. Then, just when I think the plague has passed I get it and lost my voice for almost 4 days and had to use 2 sick days for work.
My voice is returning, the cough is nearly gone. The daughter's cough has been gone for maybe a week. The husband still has a residual cough. Things are looking up. It is a new month, but it doesn't last. Yesterday the daughter starts grabbing at her lower abdomen, about where the bladder should be and starts screaming and saying she has to pee. This continues on for the rest of the night. I take her in to the doctor today and expect a diagnosis of bladder or urinary tract infection but that is not the case. She is stumped. All the symptoms of a bladder infection but the lab results say no. So, I am told to take her home, make her drink her fluids and give her nice warm baths, with no bubblebath.
After a couple of hours of still dealing with her pain and cries and runs to the bathroom, she has started to puke now and I can't really give her anything. So, I decide to go to the drug store and pick up some Coke (great for upset stomachs) and maybe some rectal Tylenol. If someone is puking so much they can't keep down medicine, sometimes you can give the medicine through the rectum and at least they can have some relief from pain.
So, I am browsing the aisle at the drug store and discover that they actually do have pediatric doses of rectal Tylenol. Then I discover what is truly amazing, dissolving Tylenol. These sweet little tablets that just dissolve on the tongue, which means they are absorbed straight into the blood stream through the oral membranes! My god, what a fantastic invention. That goes into the shopping basket.
Next, I am off to the stomach aisle. You can't typically give a kid with stomach flu anything for it, especially something like Pepto-Bismol because it contains aspirin. I decide to check anyways since I found this amazing new form of Tylenol. They did have this product on this shelf that said it was an anti-emetic for kids so I read the label. Ingredients listed were glucose, fructose and phosphoric acid . . . surprisingly those are the same ingredients in the Coke I had already thrown in the basket. Coke for an upset stomach is a remedy that has been passed on for a long time and now someone has put some of those same ingredients in a medicine so they can charge more for it. Go figure. I am definitely keeping the Coke in the shopping basket.
Next comes the beginning of the really funny part of this shopping adventure. The doctor had a theory that maybe some of the pain she is experiencing is from irritation from either too many bubble baths or time in the chlorinated waters of the hot tub. She recommended warm baths or sitz baths for the daughter, so I was in the feminine hygiene aisle to see if they had something you could add to warm baths to help with discomfort. There was a guy there browsing the condom section. I am thinking, 'Good for him. Practicing safe sex.' Then I remember I had seen him earlier looking in the booze section with his girlfriend while I was buying the Coke.
By the way, there was nothing in the feminine hygiene department for the daughter's ailment. I ended up just using a normal hot bath.
I am finally at the check out line and who is in front of me? The guy who had been shopping for booze and condoms with his girlfriend. Yet, he was buying only one item . . . a fakey rhinestone, sparkly thing that I think was for her hair or maybe was a bracelet. That was it.
I am left wondering did he decide he wasn't going to get lucky and gave up on the booze and condoms? Or, is she a cheap date and only needs some fake bling to get excited? Maybe he already had enough condoms? Who knows, but it was kind of amusing. Fakey bling from the drug store.
The dissolving Tylenol and Coke were big hit back at home.
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