You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 18th, 2007.
When my kids get sick, which two currently are, for some reason it gets me thinking about when I was a kid. Maybe it’s the sitting with the sick child & just snuggling for hours. Maybe its the staring at “Little Bear” & “Blue’s Clues” (the best ones – with Steve!) reruns Grandma W taped for us when Nate was a toddler while we were in Korea. I watched them so many times when he was little – watching them again is mind-numbing, even years later. I start to zone out. So I let the day drift by, enjoy the snuggle, & drift back in my mind, trying to put myself in my little ones’ shoes. There’s not too many golden opportunities like that in our everyday lives.
Anyway, today I was thinking about how it was when I was a kid & sick. Things were sure different. My nurse mother-in-law has taught me how to use medicine. When my kids are sick, there’s usually a pill to give them. We have a pill for pain, whether it be head or boo-boo, in tablet or liquid form, two different kinds so if it’s really bad it can be used alternately. We have burn spray, first-aid ointment, band-aids which can cure just about everything if the truth be told. We have rapid melt allergy relief tablets for colds and elixir for basically any ailment except nausea. For nausea, there’s children’s Pepto-Bismol now. Works pretty well – thanks for the heads up on that one, Serena!
My upbringing was different, partly because the medicines weren’t as numerous as today, but partly because my parents were more into gutting it out I guess. I don’t remember taking very many medicines as a child. What I do remember is kind of funny to think about, so I write it here for my children’s enjoyment…
When nauseous, you got Cola Syrup. You had to have crushed ice (Dad would put some in a towel & hit it with a hammer a few times), then pour a tablespoon over the top of the ice in a cup. It was delicious & did the trick. I actually found some of this syrup still around at Walmart last year. I gave some to the kids just now. Callie likes, Anders not so much. I upgraded from the hammer to a nice ultra blender (my Silver Bullet Mom gave me for Christmas last year). Works great! No ice chips sticking to the towel for me!
For barf bags, Dad would get a stack of paper grocery bags, carefully roll down the lip of each bag, snap them up real stiff, & fill them with wads of newspaper. Then he would put one by each place we might need one- bedside, by the couch, etc.
If we needed penicillin which I did pretty often before my tonsils were removed, Dad would again crush the nasty horsepill, put the dust on a tablespoon, & put sugar & milk with it on the spoon. It didn’t really cover the taste, but the sugar made it at least tolerable.
Grandma Gertie’s specialty was sore throats. If ever you had a sore throat in our family, out came the long swab & “tincature”. This was a concoction consisting of half merthiolate & half glycerin. You can’t buy merthiolate at the store anymore. It causes birth defects if you use it while pregnant. But if you know you’re not pregnant, it does work wonders! Dad bought up a bunch of merthiolate about ten years ago when he heard they were going to stop selling it & mixed up bottles for whoever wanted one. We still have the bottle. We use it very sparingly. But as a child, I have vivid memories of often sticking my tongue out for Grandma Gertie or Dad & saying “ah” while s/he gagged me & my eyes watered.
Whenever there was an earache in the family (& I had my share thanks to an over active wax something or other), Mom would pull out the heating pad & I’d lay on it all day with my sore ear to the heat. It had a crazy flowered slipcover on it & was basically a plastic, flat, half-sized pillow that you plugged in. My ear would turn bright red from the heat but boy, did it feel good!
This wasn’t medicine, but whenever we went to the dentist, Dr. Van would give us these little red tablets that we could chew up after we brushed & it would make all the tarter we missed with our toothbrush turn red so we could brush better. I asked Doc Van about those a few years back & was sad to hear he didn’t have them anymore. Last year, though, I came across the same idea just in mouthwash form - Agent Cool Blue Rinse! Some Generation Xer, no doubt, remembering their childhood & beat me to the millions!
If you had a burn, butter was the remedy. That & ice wrapped in a towel. We did have those little orange baby asprin tablets. I remember those well. And if we were out of Grandma’s secret tincature, there was Cepacol throat spray & you got to take a box of Sucrets to school & pop those babies whenever you wanted. This is strickly taboo now in schools. But in the 70’s, hey!
And lastly, I reminisce about the books I would take comfort in when sick. I enjoyed one in particular that Nate still has & enjoys – a paperback Scholastic buy (rare!) – “The Sick of Being Sick Book” by Jovial Bob Stine. I loved that book! Others we frequently got out of the library to peruse when sick were… The Whim-Wham Book, The Nonsense Book, and the Guiness Book of World Records back before it turned trashy. I guess these books were especially enjoyed when sick because they were all big books with lots of quick tidbit type sections in them. You could pick them up, read for ten minutes, put it down when your eyes got tired, then easily pick up again after your hour long cat nap. I absolutely loved the Whim-Wham Book & the Nonsense Book. Probably nobody else in Bucyrus (the library I took them from) heard of them because I always had them checked out. They were a set. I think there was one more in the set, but I can’t remember the name. And I’ll be jiggered if I can find much out about any of these old gems on line.
Well, I better go get back to snuggling with my young’uns. Since I don’t have to worry about lunch – we’re having popsicles, Sprite & chicken bouillon. Along with the Cola Syrup over ice.
