It's that time of year where people are getting sick. First we had the dreaded stomach bug go through the house and now it's the common cold. Froggie is coughing a bit and has a little runny nose. I, however, will be down for three days or more feeling like a bus ran me over and then the driver backed up to see what he hit. She's sick and wants to run and play. I'm sick and want to lay down and loose consciousness for a few hours. I'm truly miserable and she's blown it off.
So while I was making sure Froggie could be well enough to run and jump and play, I was also thinking about children's medicine now and children's medicine when I was a kid. My mother told me that the favorite treatment for anything that was ailing you was castor oil when she was a kid. I think she told me that as a child to try to make me feel better about taking the disgusting tasting medicine I had.
I remember watching Mary Poppins as a kid sing about taking a spoonful of sugar because this would make the medicine go down. She was probably right about this. I tried to convince my mother that this would be a good idea when I had to take medicine. It didn't work. Hey it was worth the try.
My husband and I were trying to figure out just which medicine tasted worse. Triaminic was the cough medicine we had to take. It came in three colors, yellow, orange and red. Each color treated different symptoms so it depended on what you had as to what color you had to take. We both agreed that the orange was the least offensive flavor. While it was sickening sweet, you could drink it down rather quickly. I think the yellow was the worse. Red was tolerable. Not the best tasting medicine in the world but not the worst. I do remember as a child holding my nose hoping that would help. It didn't. The yellow was just terrible and made me want to throw up when I had to take it. I can't even describe what it tasted like to you today but I remember it. I can taste that nasty tasting stuff at this very moment.
So when I was directed by the doctor to give Froggie some cough medicine, I was reluctant. Not because I didn't think it was alright to do it. It was because I was dreading having to give her nasty tasting medicine. Oh I was in for a shock. They still sell Triaminic today. I'm not advertising for them since I actually bought the drugstore version of it. I was surprised to see it is still made. It comes in a Daytime and Nighttime version. The Daytime is a nice cherry flavored medicine while the Nighttime is grape. Where the hell was this when I was a kid. No disgusting tasting medicine that would leave an after taste in your mouth. Oh my daughter gets the stuff that tastes so good she's more than willing to take it.
The good thing about medicine tasting the way it does is unlike my mother, I will never have to fight with Froggie to take it so she'll feel better. The bad thing is she'll never have to take a spoonful of sugar to make it go down.
