Entries from January 2009

January 15, 2009

Tip for Masking Medication Taste

  Does your child refuse to take medicine?  Have you been sent home with a completely unpalatable concoction?  In a previous post I wrote about a patient who refuses her medicine.  I gave her mother this photocopied and pencil-annotated list, which is rumored to have been created by someone on the pediatric hematology-oncology service at University of California, [...]

January 13, 2009

Are you serious? No way I’m taking that medicine, dude!

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January 12, 2009

A Spoonful of Sugar, Peanut Butter, or Grape Juice: How to Get Kids to Take Their Medicine

What is it about some kids? Some kids take their medicine (ok, expect the really disgusting ones) without a peep.  Some even love the taste of medicines and ask for them when they’re not ill at all.  I was one of these strange kids.  Grape-flavored dimetapp was definitely incentive to develop a little sniffle. Most [...]

January 5, 2009

Here, Try Some Yummy Dog Food! (Kidding. Just Goldfish.)

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January 4, 2009

Dog Food May be Yummy, But Beware: On The Pet Food Salmonella Outbreak

My general philosophy about childhood is that kids should get down and dirty as much as possible. I think that dirt is good for kids (as are stubbed toes and scraped elbows). Builds character! So when parents tell me that their kid ate some sand at the beach or the playground, I tell them not [...]

January 2, 2009

Woohoo! Let’s get this party started!

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January 1, 2009

Beginnings…

    “I’m going to break my child!”  Every day in my pediatrics practice in San Francisco, California, parents come into my office in a bit of a tizzy.  Or a really big tizzy.  It is my job, one in which I take great pleasure, to help to calm their worries. Who can blame parents [...]