Drugs (The Prescription Kind)
The Boy went in for his six-year-old well check yesterday and like a fool, I forgot to bring the school form that I needed the doctor to fill out. Which means I’ll be making another visit to the doctor. Not that going to the doctor is such an uncommon thing for me.
When your child has severe eczema, your child is an easy target for infections, which means you visit the doctor. A LOT. I saw my doctor’s admin at the community center over the holidays and she totally knew my name. I hate to say it, but this level of recognition isn’t really par for the course any more in doctors’ offices, so you KNOW I’m there a lot.
The good news is that Doctor thought The Boy looked pretty good at his well check yesterday. He’s growing, getting taller, gaining weight, has normal blood pressure, and she proclaimed his skin “not bad for The Boy.”
Happy dance!
So, of course, Doctor wants to talk about how we’re treating his skin. A combination of obsession, dietary changes, advice from alternative health practitioners (chiropractor, naturopathic, acupuncture), and limited use of topical steroids.
I’ve unfortunately been through many prescription drugs in the past six years to treat eczema. For those of you with drug use history, you might relate well to the uncomfortable moments when you asked for a refill only to find out that such-and-such drug has been recalled. This has happened twice to me in the past, once with a topical non-steroid-but-prescription-strength cream (now available again on the market) and an oral steroid that I enjoy administering about as much as I might enjoy eating the dirt cleaned out of my toenails.
If you haven’t been in this situation, here is a brief reenactment:
Me: Why was it recalled?
Former Doctor: Hmm. I don’t know exactly. Something like causing cancer in monkeys? Or something like that. But don’t worry about it.
While you’re at it, why don’t you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?
Now, between you and me (and, you know, the internet-reading public), I think it’s best to avoid prescription drugs whenever possible. I’m always making an effort to use as little steroid as possible. But sometimes, it just happens that that prescription drugs come in handy, like when I had a MRSA infection that wouldn’t go away until I took crazy antibiotics. But I’ve always been paranoid about how to keep track of drug information, like recalls and bad reactions, which is why it was even more upsetting to not once but TWICE be caught unawares by a recall.
And this is why I’m glad to be a member of MomCentral. I recently received this message from them about Drugs.com and MedNotes:
“MedNotes provides a free online personalized medication management program that can be used to track the whole family’s medication profiles… you can enter the names of all the medications being taken and then register to receive drug safety or interaction alerts to ultimately help reduce dangerous side effects and avoid unwanted drug interactions. In addition, MedNotes will send you new drug and specific condition news released by the FDA or drug makers related to the medications your family members take.”
Thank you, Drugs.com and MedNotes, for relieving my worries. Now if I could just get everyone in the house to a point where we didn’t have to use the drugs at all…
