Confession (aka I feel so dirty now)

tsg

Philosopher
tsg
Joined
Sep 7, 2005
Messages
6,771
At 5am this morning, my five-year-old son wakes up screaming with an earache. My wife, who is an RN and used to work for our pediatrician, sends me out to the store at 6am to get Samilisan. I've never heard of it and just assumed that it was something the doctor had said to use. I get there to find out it's homeopathic. I call my wife to ask her about it and she says she saw it on TV. Teach me to assume. So, I'm looking around for a real treatment and can't find anything, so I ask the pharmacist who says that they have some homeopatic remedies in the aisle I just came out of, and I said, "But they're homeopathic." She gives me a nasty look and says "well, that's all we have."

So what do I do? I buy the crap anyway. I spent $10 on a half-ounce of glycerine and a list of non-ingredients. "Why?", you ask. Because I'm not that bright. Okay, really, the reason I bought it is because I have a screaming five-year-old whose stuffy noses clear up before I can put the top back on the medicine bottle and insists on a band-aid for a bruise because it makes it feel better. He's at that age where kissing it still makes it better and I thought I might get a little placebo effect out of it and this stuff is at least supposed to be used in the ear. If I wasn't late for work already I would probably have looked around for some other ear drops I could say was medicine to keep him happy until my wife takes him to the doctor in a couple of hours, but I know crap about medicine and what I pick might make his ear worse.

But I still feel like I got rooked. This stuff could cure his earache in minutes and I'll still feel like I got rooked. I am unclean.

And I might as well say ahead of time to anybody asking "why didn't you ...", the answer is "because I'm a Grade A Moron," but thank you for the advice. I'll keep it in mind for next time.

Maybe I can put the glycerine in my soap to wash the stench off....
 
Your actions bother me less than those of your wife. I can only hope I'm never treated or assisted by an RN who treats based on what she saw on TV.
 
Think of it this way, you spent $10 and made your wife happy by purchasing what she asked you to purchase. :)
 
You could always tip out the 'medicine' and replace it with boiled water, no one will be able to tell the difference.
 
tsg, I totally understand where you are coming from. My 11 month old has been teething FOREVER, and last time I was in Whole Foods I found myself looking at the homeopathic teething tablets and thinking to myself "well, at least they couldn't HURT her..."

The price snapped me out of it. Someone's making a bundle off of those sugar pills.
 
I've got a dim memory of going on a long coach ride as a kid and having my mum make me sit on a folded newspaper because that 'cured travel sickness'. And it did - I didn't chunder at all, when I always had in the past. Proud that she at least used a free placebo than spending good money on a bottle of 'travel sickness pills', which were probably just sherbert or something.
 
Don't feel too bad, I think they put Homeopathic on it, like folks put "low sodium or low fat" on things that have always been that way. It makes them sell better now. As the son of an RN, we always had a dropper bottle of Glycerine in the medicine cabinet for ear aches (warm it up in a pan of water), and it generally causes relief of the pain (and this goes back to the late 60's). Im not sure of how it works, but it did.
 
MWare said:
Your actions bother me less than those of your wife. I can only hope I'm never treated or assisted by an RN who treats based on what she saw on TV.
Click to expand...

To her credit, she didn't know it was homeopathic until I told her and when she found out said, "well see if you can find something that will work."

As far as choosing this "remedy" from a TV ad, if it really is an over-the-counter medication it does have to meet some fairly stringent guidelines from the FDA, including showing some benefit. Unless, of course, it's homeopathic, in which case it just isn't allowed to have any adverse effects at the recommended dosage level.

ETA: And a screaming five-year-old at 5am can make your requirements a little less stringent....
 
It worked. Here is proof:

goldmedal1.jpg
 
In lots of US chemists, homoeopathic ear drops seem to have pushed out some drops which do actually work - I couldn't find (olive) oil--based drops to clear wax, and the choice was either homoeopathic glycerine or hydrogen peroxide :(
 
tsg said:
To her credit, she didn't know it was homeopathic until I told her and when she found out said, "well see if you can find something that will work."

As far as choosing this "remedy" from a TV ad, if it really is an over-the-counter medication it does have to meet some fairly stringent guidelines from the FDA, including showing some benefit. Unless, of course, it's homeopathic, in which case it just isn't allowed to have any adverse effects at the recommended dosage level.

ETA: And a screaming five-year-old at 5am can make your requirements a little less stringent....
Click to expand...

One of the great disadvantages to growing up with an RN and a skeptic (at least in terms of medicine) as a mother was that you could never bs your way into a sick day out of school. On the upside, you knew whenever you were really sick, you would get the best treatment and be back to the normal kid high-jinx in no time. My mother would ask a LOT of questions before my pediatrician would proceed with any treatment for anything, even though she held him in very high esteem and to my memory never strayed from his advice in the end.

I realize she's not a pediatrician, but I would still have thought that at some point in her training or professional experience your wife would have come across the proper treatment for a child's earache. I would hope you both use this as an opportunity to rethink how you guys handle your kid's ailments. I'm sure there will be many before your kid hits adulthood and while I can imagine the urge to end your child's suffering ASAP, I'm sure you're aware that a non-scientific cure for even the most trivial ailment can be dangerous. I realize homeopathy is generally benign (in a direct sense), but if you're interested in raising a child to think critically, I'm sure you'd agree the best thing is to teach by example.
 
Basilio said:
Don't feel too bad, I think they put Homeopathic on it, like folks put "low sodium or low fat" on things that have always been that way. It makes them sell better now.
Click to expand...

I would agree with you except that the package has a list of three "active" ingredients and their homeopathic dilutions: Chamomilla HPUS 10X, Mercurius Solubilis HPUS 15X, Sulphur HPUS 12X.

As the son of an RN, we always had a dropper bottle of Glycerine in the medicine cabinet for ear aches (warm it up in a pan of water), and it generally causes relief of the pain (and this goes back to the late 60's). Im not sure of how it works, but it did.
Click to expand...

I'll feel better if it actually works, except that a 4oz bottle of Glycerin from the same store is $3 and I spend $10 on 1/3 oz.
 
MWare said:
One of the great disadvantages to growing up with an RN and a skeptic (at least in terms of medicine) as a mother was that you could never bs your way into a sick day out of school. On the upside, you knew whenever you were really sick, you would get the best treatment and be back to the normal kid high-jinx in no time. My mother would ask a LOT of questions before my pediatrician would proceed with any treatment for anything, even though she held him in very high esteem and to my memory never strayed from his advice in the end.

I realize she's not a pediatrician, but I would still have thought that at some point in her training or professional experience your wife would have come across the proper treatment for a child's earache. I would hope you both use this as an opportunity to rethink how you guys handle your kid's ailments. I'm sure there will be many before your kid hits adulthood and while I can imagine the urge to end your child's suffering ASAP, I'm sure you're aware that a non-scientific cure for even the most trivial ailment can be dangerous. I realize homeopathy is generally benign (in a direct sense), but if you're interested in raising a child to think critically, I'm sure you'd agree the best thing is to teach by example.
Click to expand...

I agree with everything you say here, but I feel I have to clarify something. My wife's goal was not to cure his earache, which is usually caused by an infection or something else that a doctor should really diagnose, but just to give him some relief until she could get him to the doctor and Tylenol wasn't working. I come from a long line of RNs and we all give doctors a hard time about our treatments. Especially me. Since I know absolutely squat, I have to have everything explained to me. It even led me to change doctors once when I realized mine was an idiot. But at 5am when he's in real pain, how this is going to affect his critical thinking skills isn't your highest priority.
 
tsg said:
I agree with everything you say here, but I feel I have to clarify something. My wife's goal was not to cure his earache, which is usually caused by an infection or something else that a doctor should really diagnose, but just to give him some relief until she could get him to the doctor and Tylenol wasn't working. I come from a long line of RNs and we all give doctors a hard time about our treatments. Especially me. Since I know absolutely squat, I have to have everything explained to me. It even led me to change doctors once when I realized mine was an idiot. But at 5am when he's in real pain, how this is going to affect his critical thinking skills isn't your highest priority.
Click to expand...

I guess not having kids of my own I probably was quite wrong when I said I can understand what it must be like to have a sick kid. If I do ever reproduce and my child gets sick, I think I'll just ship 'em to my Mom.

:)
 
I wonder how a kid would respond to the 'ear wax removal' stuff ? I can hear it foaming and bubbling in my ear, it would have to have maximum placebo effect. It's oil and "carbamide", urea I guess. I don't know if it would burn in an infected ear though. I know a home remedy used to be urine in the ear...
 
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