What I Am All About

Monday, October 12, 2020

Benadryl Use for Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease

 My Quora Answer to:


Does Benadryl help hand, foot, and mouth disease?


If the rash (dermatitis) is pruritic (itchy) then, yes.


HFMD rarely occurs in adults and when it does, can be extremely itchy. Conversely, it is rarely pruritic in children, who catch it much more frequently.


The lesions are painful, so over-the-counter pain medications like acetaminophen and ibuprofen will help. Adults can use aspirin safely if not contraindicated, but avoid it in children because of the increased risk of Reye's Syndrome in that age group.


The above pain relievers are also antipyretic, meaning that they will reduce fever. And chills.


Heat can increase the pain so avoid hot liquids. Very cold beverages decrease pain.


If your rash is itchy, then by all means take Benadryl (diphenhydramine) and/or the non-sedating antihistamines such as Allegra, Claritin, and Zyrtec.





Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease




Sunday, October 11, 2020

To Spank or Not to Spank? That is the Real Question.

 My Quora Answer to: Would you spank a teen like me if you had to?


"Unless it’s done between consenting adults, spanking is VERY rarely warranted. Before I go into more detail, allow me to provide my child-forwarding (and not “-rearing”) credentials."

Spankings


Monday, October 5, 2020

The COVID-19 Antibiotic Cocktail


Trump is going back to work tonight only three days after being hospitalized with a COVID-19 infection. I tried looking up the ingredients of the "antibiotic cocktail" but could only discover the manufacturer (Regeneron). I suppose that the recipe is proprietary, but it would be helpful if at least physicians would know in order to educate patients. 

And yes, I do know someone who caught it early on, and she ended up in the hospital for a couple of weeks. It's real. It's out there. And it can be fatal.

"Serological status at baseline also predicted how rapidly patients had alleviation of their COVID-19 clinical symptoms. In the untreated (placebo) patients, seropositive patients had a median time to alleviation of symptoms of 7 days, compared to seronegative patients who had a median time to alleviation of symptoms of 13 days.

REGN-COV2 rapidly reduced viral load through Day 7 in seronegative patients (key virologic endpoint)."