Pardon me while I lose my head and become Ranty McRanterson for a few minutes, I hope you don’t mind.
I’m trying to wrap my mind around how this is supposed to work, m’kay? My infant is sick. Stuffy and runny nose, congestion, cough, low grade fever. The infant Tylenol Cold drops we had are now used up, so I sent hubby to the commissary to get more.. he found none. To the PX – none. To Walmart – none. To Walgreens – none.
Before he walked into Walgreens he called me, and I asked him to go over to the pharmacists and ask them why there isn’t any anywhere if they, too, didn’t have any. And so he did. And do you know what they told him??
It’s because parents were overdosing their babies, so they stopped offering these medicines over the counter.
Let me let you chew on this statement for a minute.
The WHOLE ENTIRE PURPOSE of offering over the counter cold medicines to people is to help YOU fight off a cold ON YOUR OWN so that you don’t have to see a doctor. PERIOD. Because 9 times out of 10, with a cold, your wasting your’s and the doctor’s time in making that appointment to be seen. Often times, especially if you’re a worry wart like me and your child has the sniffles, it’s often the first thing you do, is call a doctor. “Oh! My child has green slime oozing out of her nose, it’s a disease I tell you, a DISEEEEEAAAAASSSEEE!!!”
Okay, well maybe I’m not that dramatic on the phone. But really, I do take it very seriously, and call. But you still need those over the counter medicines, because there are times, like on the weekends, when it isn’t possible to see your doctor until Monday, and it isn’t that serious to rush to the ER. But without these over the counter meds, what the heck are you supposed to do now?!
You know, we’re big, we can fake the funk and go without cold meds, and sniffle and sneeze and wash our hands to prevent from getting sicker. But our children, they need it, they can’t fend for themselves, blow their noses, seek refuge in a warm towel to open their sinuses, or drink tea. I’m not a big medicine buff, but when a good decongestant is needed, it’s needed. Period.
Despite my taking my children’s illnesses seriously and getting appointments in such, I have to be honest in that, I don’t have much faith in doctors (and now drug companies) anymore. And this most recent development doesn’t help me any. Let me tell you, it ANGERS. ME. TO. NO. END. when I’ve busted my butt, getting a sick child (possibly more) dressed and out the door, to wait in their waiting room, corral the troops to fit somehow into their teeny examination rooms, only for the doctor to say “Eh, it’s just a cold or virus, no medicine can help. Use a vaporizer and drink extra fluids, that should do the trick.” and send me and my sicklies on my merry, angry friggin’ way, instructed to continue on with the very.same.protocol I’ve already administered that got me no where, which BROUGHT me to you in the first place, dumbass!
{deep breaths.. deep breaths}
And now I have to ENDURE this special kind of torture every time my child has the sniffles and his/her nose is running into her lap, just to get my child a once over the counter remedy at the doctors’ offices which are already mega-overbooked to maximum as it is, simply because there were some parents who decided to not follow the label, not do as they were supposed to, and give their children medications when they weren’t supposed to?? Are they SERIOUS?!
Now, because of these Jerk-A-Saurus parents irresponsible people, my child, my husband, my family and I and many others like us who need over the counter medicines will suffer, simply because the drug companies don’t want to get sued and these parents had to be idiots and do the wrong thing, punishing the rest of us, and our sick children while they’re at it.
Saline nose spray… MY BUTT! How’s that gonna help his baby cough?
Pardon me while I go get a spork and jab someone with it right now, because my little dude? He’s not feeling good. And we’re out of meds. And we couldn’t get him seen unless we wanted to sit 8+ hours in the ER, alongside people hacking up their lungs waiting to be seen, only to have an ER doc tell us it was a cold and still not offer us the razza-frackin’, son-of-a-mother-less-goat, stinkin’ infant cold medicine they can only prescribe to us now anyway.
Seriously. Going. To. Lose. My. Mind.
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AMEN!!! I found this post after researching all of this because of the misery my 9 month old is going through. I read the original FDA reports and found that, indeed, it was a VERY small number of infants that died and they ALL had high dosages in their systems. I went to askdrsears.com and searched their site for infant medications and came up with "older" dosage recommendations, and used that as a guide to giving my child Children's Tylenol cold medicine (which contains different ingredients). I'm very careful about the dosing, give her less than recommended, and only at night and it WORKs for her and she SLEEPS.
Really….I could have written your post myself. Thanks for this. 🙂