What to do when growing pains wake up your kid...
...and there is no pain reliever (e.g., Tylenol) in the house.
Yes, this is a 2 AM post due to a 1:30 AM wake up call to miserable wailing in the night. I've lost track of just how much the kiddo weighs at this point. At the last check-up at the doc's, the kiddo was 61+ lbs, which would have put the dosage to 12.5 mL (2.5 teaspoons) of the pain relieving medicine (if we had it in the house).
The first thing I did was not to look up the actual dosage to the above nonexistent meds in the house but to look up "holistic 'tylenol' for kids." I had no idea what my search engine results would fetch. Other terms I suppose that I could have looked up would have been: "home remedies for growing pains" or something else along the same lines.
Anyway, the first thing I saw were scary articles on the internet that warned people from using acetaminophen in the first place!
Shocked, I clicked on an article or two, as you could see from the purple vs. blue headlines in the search results. I didn't get past the first three search results to find out some startling stats from that first article I clicked on. Below are the main things that stood out to me.According to a six-year study in Hepatology, "researchers found that 42% of 662 cases of acute liver failure in 22 clinical settings were caused by acetaminophen poisoning, and 29% of the individuals suffering from acetaminophen toxicity died." According to an article on Medscape, overdosing on acetaminophen causes 56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalizations and 458 deaths annually.Acetaminophen can cause changes in liver function, contribute to liver toxicity, liver problems or outright liver failure. in the liver and cause liver toxicity. Children's livers are far smaller than adults. The search results listed all kinds of things, such as seasonal allergies and autism and a product recall.Within three clicks I found my next search term: "anti-inflammatory foods." The results drew a sponsored ad, a highlighted box with a poster featured, and the organic results of the search phrase I entered. My eyes immediately zoned in on the featured box between ad and results.
Seeing that the information in the box was from a reputable source (Harvard University), I went down the checklist to see what kinds of groceries we had in the home.
Tomatoes. We didn't have tomatoes in the house. If we did, they had already been blended with onions and bell peppers for a soup base and stocked in the freezer. Out went the first item.
Olive oil. We had plenty of that. I gave my kiddo a teaspoon of olive oil. Then I went down the list and crossed out the rest.
Dark green leafy vegetables. We only had kale in the house, which took too much time to wash and cook and soften the stalky part of the vegetable. I suppose I could have given the kiddo raw kale greens (as opposed to the stalk). In all honesty, I did not think of the raw kale option amidst the on-demand wails at my ears.
Nuts. We did not have almonds or walnuts in the house. Out went that option.
Fish. We had frozen salmon, canned tuna and canned sardines. I put the salmon on the stove, then thought better of it and opened a can of tuna to heat up. All the while the kiddo was roaming the house, totally miserable and grieving from the pain in the knee in particular.
Berries. We did have frozen blueberries, but using the powerful in-house blender to liquefy these berries to enable fast assimilation and absorption would have woken up the husband. I was going to use the blueberries as a last resort, if the kiddo was still in pain.
Remember the salmon and tuna I had on the stove? Well, as soon as the tuna heated up (within five minutes), I gave the kiddo one or two tablespoons of it, since the rest of it was touching the raw salmon. The kiddo dutifully ate the tuna.
Since I had to stay at the stove for the salmon to be thoroughly cooked, as I was standing there the wailings stopped and the kiddo was entirely happy to go to bed. The raw salmon often takes about twenty minutes to cook. I'd say that I was a third of the way there when the kiddo retired to bed.
All in all, if I were to put a time frame to this debacle, the anti-inflammatory foods worked within twenty minutes. Not bad, eh?
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Yes, this is a 2 AM post due to a 1:30 AM wake up call to miserable wailing in the night. I've lost track of just how much the kiddo weighs at this point. At the last check-up at the doc's, the kiddo was 61+ lbs, which would have put the dosage to 12.5 mL (2.5 teaspoons) of the pain relieving medicine (if we had it in the house).
The first thing I did was not to look up the actual dosage to the above nonexistent meds in the house but to look up "holistic 'tylenol' for kids." I had no idea what my search engine results would fetch. Other terms I suppose that I could have looked up would have been: "home remedies for growing pains" or something else along the same lines.
Anyway, the first thing I saw were scary articles on the internet that warned people from using acetaminophen in the first place!
Shocked, I clicked on an article or two, as you could see from the purple vs. blue headlines in the search results. I didn't get past the first three search results to find out some startling stats from that first article I clicked on. Below are the main things that stood out to me.According to a six-year study in Hepatology, "researchers found that 42% of 662 cases of acute liver failure in 22 clinical settings were caused by acetaminophen poisoning, and 29% of the individuals suffering from acetaminophen toxicity died." According to an article on Medscape, overdosing on acetaminophen causes 56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalizations and 458 deaths annually.Acetaminophen can cause changes in liver function, contribute to liver toxicity, liver problems or outright liver failure. in the liver and cause liver toxicity. Children's livers are far smaller than adults. The search results listed all kinds of things, such as seasonal allergies and autism and a product recall.Within three clicks I found my next search term: "anti-inflammatory foods." The results drew a sponsored ad, a highlighted box with a poster featured, and the organic results of the search phrase I entered. My eyes immediately zoned in on the featured box between ad and results. Seeing that the information in the box was from a reputable source (Harvard University), I went down the checklist to see what kinds of groceries we had in the home.Tomatoes. We didn't have tomatoes in the house. If we did, they had already been blended with onions and bell peppers for a soup base and stocked in the freezer. Out went the first item.
Olive oil. We had plenty of that. I gave my kiddo a teaspoon of olive oil. Then I went down the list and crossed out the rest.
Dark green leafy vegetables. We only had kale in the house, which took too much time to wash and cook and soften the stalky part of the vegetable. I suppose I could have given the kiddo raw kale greens (as opposed to the stalk). In all honesty, I did not think of the raw kale option amidst the on-demand wails at my ears.
Nuts. We did not have almonds or walnuts in the house. Out went that option.
Fish. We had frozen salmon, canned tuna and canned sardines. I put the salmon on the stove, then thought better of it and opened a can of tuna to heat up. All the while the kiddo was roaming the house, totally miserable and grieving from the pain in the knee in particular.
Berries. We did have frozen blueberries, but using the powerful in-house blender to liquefy these berries to enable fast assimilation and absorption would have woken up the husband. I was going to use the blueberries as a last resort, if the kiddo was still in pain.
Remember the salmon and tuna I had on the stove? Well, as soon as the tuna heated up (within five minutes), I gave the kiddo one or two tablespoons of it, since the rest of it was touching the raw salmon. The kiddo dutifully ate the tuna.Since I had to stay at the stove for the salmon to be thoroughly cooked, as I was standing there the wailings stopped and the kiddo was entirely happy to go to bed. The raw salmon often takes about twenty minutes to cook. I'd say that I was a third of the way there when the kiddo retired to bed.
All in all, if I were to put a time frame to this debacle, the anti-inflammatory foods worked within twenty minutes. Not bad, eh?
Like my posts? Please support my writing at Patreon.
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