Saturday, July 10, 2010

And the Bumble Bee said Buzzzzzzz

Today was a scary, yet exciting day. I was playing outside with my brothers while daddy was working in the yard with G2. Mom was making Iced Mochas, YUM!

While I was running around all of a sudden I felt a sharp pain in my leg and looked down and saw a weird reddish orange bug. I cried, daddy scooped me up and ran me in the house as I told him something stung me. Mom grabbed an ice pack and started talking about how irritated she was with Johnson and Johnson along with McNeil Labs. Apparently, I can only take Tylenol (or acetaminophen) if it is dye free and in rare cases I can take Benedryl, again dye free. With those medications on recall right now, there isn't anything over the counter that I can take.

The good news is that with the ice and elevation, the poison from the sting stayed put. Plus, Papa offered trying a wet aspirin on the sting held on with a bandage... it worked. After an hour of laying on the couch and playing video games, the sting site was no longer swollen and the pain was gone.

Now... my irritation with pharmaceutical companies can be expressed...

It seems that Johnson & Johnson knew of problems with their children's Tylenol and Benedryl long before the FDA stepped in. Complaints are over a year old in some instances. While not everybody has to have dye free medication, I do. Honestly I don't understand why they put the dye in the medication. There are no benefits from it. In the last few months in our small community we have discovered several others that also have to avoid red 40. My symptoms are a rapid heart rate and extreme hyperactivity. It lasts for hours and when I finally collapse to go to sleep, I sleep and sleep only to wake up with my head hurting and feeling horrible. My cousin gets sick off of it too...

Anyhow, what good is medication if I can't take it because of the "inert" or "inactive" ingredients?

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