Monday, February 25, 2008

Update: Mass of Tape

The nurse called to say its hopeless to try the test again, since the tape doesn't stick to my kid's skin (!?!). So I am to use products without dyes or perfumes, and the doctor will talk to me on Thursday when we go in for the needle-test. Neither Joey nor I am looking forward to that test. I have that lidocaine cream they tell you not to put saran wrap on, with instructions to put it on my kid and cover it in saran wrap. Lovely.

4 comments:

Stimey said...

What a weird thing the tape doesn't stick to him. Hmmmmm.

Niksmom said...

Wonder if it has something to do with the oils in his skin? That lidocaine article was a tad scary w/te saran wrap!

Will be thinking ofyou and hoping it all goes well!

Club 166 said...

OK, two things.

One, I have almost never found that I couldn't get tape to stick to someone. Niksmom is right on track. What I do for those who it doesn't at first seem to stick is to "degrease" their skin. I use alcohol on cotton 4x4 sponges to wipe down the area, wiping with a medium amount of firmness. After the alcohol has dried, apply the tape.

Two, it is routine to place a "Tegaderm" dressing (similar to Saran Wrap) over topical cream local anesthetic in pediatric patients. The problem only comes when you apply too much anesthetic to too large a surface area for too long a time. If the dose is OK, then it's fine. Application for 30-60 minutes would be standard.

Joe

Joeymom said...

Well, then maybe it is unusual, because she did alcohol-swab him before starting, and made sure it was dry, and it still looked like a joke right from the off.

As for the cream, I'm going to do as directed by the doctor, but I still feel like there is something wrong when the packaging and the company say don't put saran wrap on this stuff, and this is the common way it is used. Somehow I feel like the company is covering their butt in case its the wrong product in the tube. And I don't like it that there is all this press about this being dangerous, to have the doc tell you to do it. Perhaps I ought to blog more about how the media forms opinions and perspective, and yet there is clearly skewing of those opinions and perspective based on sensationalism to sell ads.

I want to make it really clear that we have, so far, really liked the allergist, both the doctor and the nurses. This just seems to be a comedy of errors typical of us- we have to be the weird family that the tape doesn't stick to. The week the media is making a big deal about lidocaine cream, we get to use it. (How I'm going to wrap him in saran wrap, I'm not sure... )