food dyes and medicine

One red antibiotic, that's how it all started for me. You can read my original post here, but I thought it was worth mentioning again, because the topic keeps coming up.

My friends' kids were recently on red antibiotics and all the typical problems seemed to occur. One friend was preparing for her toddler to have his adenoids and tonsils out. She had dye free electrolyte drinks and had made numerous calls to the pharmacy to check out options for getting dye free antibiotics and pain relief medication. This is a difficult task to accomplish. I'm not sure how to put more pressure on drug makers or pharmacies, but it strikes me as concerning that I may not have a choice to give dye loaded drugs when my children are either injured or sick.

When Alex broke his arm at school back in May, the school offered purple Tylenol before I took him to the ER. I declined, hoping to get a dye free version at the hospital. I got stuck in traffic and spent longer getting there, Alex moaning in pain, poor guy. The hospital quickly offered me orange pain relief. I requested a dye free one and they said they would try. They forgot, so instead, Alex had to wait another 90 minutes for any pain relief. Then it was the original purple stuff anyway. Then he ended up with a prescription for more purple codeine at home. He was pretty "out of it" those next few days, so I'm not sure it mattered much. But it made me pretty frustrated that there doesn't seem to be much choice when it comes to medicine.

Benadryl, Tylenol, and Motrin, all have dye free products. I try to keep those on hand. I have yet to find a children's cold or cough medicine that is dye free, but I have not checked the health food store for that yet.

At least we dodged the bullet yesterday. I took the kids hiking at a quarry park. We were having a great time, enjoying nature until Ben fell and hit his head on a rock. He ended up with 5 stitches at Urgent Care. I was sooo relieved the doctor prescribed Augmentin because at least that's a white antibiotic. My family doctor also prescribed Augmentin for Alex last spring when he had a sinus infections, because I requested "dye free". I'm not sure there are many other choices of antibiotics, but at least if you make a request, there is one option.