3am musings

Just went to read about side effects of pred. I'm glad I'm stopping at 3 days. 30mg a day is quite a high dosage. One article says that anything more than 20mg a day is high dosage and may cause side effects. Should have given my son 3 days of pred only too. His was 5 days. Daughter still have quite phelgmy cough, but think 3 days is enough for her too.

All good things come with a cost.

I wonder if the hubby experienced any side effects when he was on pred. I wonder if he takes into consideration people's worry about having side effects when on pred. I think I am highly sensitive to drugs. Sabutamol gives me very bad palpatations. Had to take it during pregnancy and didn't like it very much. Even cough medication give me palpatations. So am only taking herbal cough medicine when I have a cough, otherwise I just don't take much cough medicine. As for runny nose medicine, I only take the drowsy types which means I only take it once a day at night so that I can sleep soundly and recover by the next day. So that means I'm the kind of patient who goes and see her doctor and doesn't want this medicine and that medicine and only want MC to rest and recover from stupid flu/colds. Well, except for paracetamol and mac extra for sore throat. And antibiotics when I get really sick.

And I found that there is a difference in quality between generic medicine and the branded stuffs. Take augmentin, the last antibiotics I took when I had serious sinus infection. The more expensive augmentin works better than the cheaper generic ones. And it was easier to swallow too. It doesn't dissolve so fast when it touches your saliva, which is a problem for me as it kicks up my gag reflex. So I insisted on getting the more expensive stuffs. Heh.

Anyway I am a paracetamol girl whenever I have headaches/migranes. Took ponstan once without gastric medicine and I had gastric problems for the next few days. My father has been urging me to take aspirin for my headaches, but I can do without the gastric problems it causes. Besides I'm still breastfeeding. And that's why I never put more than 2 medicated plasters whenever I have back pain. The main ingredient in these plasters are salicylic acid which is the main ingredient in aspirin.

BTW, paracetamol also have different quality and different taste. Yep, I dissolve all my paracetamol before I take it. The last round of paracetamol tasted ginsengy bittery, and its effect took more than an hour to kick in, and the headache didn't really go away. Maybe I should just stock up on a box of panadol instead of getting all those generic ones. Panadol is harder to dissolve though, I can't remember how fast the effects are, but usually paracetamol takes at least half and hour to work when the headache is already midway.

The best medicine I had for my headaches/migranes was one whose name I had already forgotten because it was withdrawn due to some side effect regarding some heart condition. I was very sad because that medicine was truely wonderful. Easy to swallow and works withing 5 to 10 minutes. No gastric problems too. That was like more than 5 years ago. I guess my migranes aren't so bad nowadays to require such drastic drugs, but having a headache is truely inhibiting, and my headaches are coming back again.