Friday, June 27, 2014

Expiration Dates

Don't worry, this post is about medications, not people. It is true that we're all slowly expiring, but that's a whole other monster. :)

Unless you're reading this post in the future, this med is still good!
You probably don't need this reminder, but boy did I need it a few weekends ago. So here it is:
Make sure your medications haven't expired!!!
I keep Fioricet and Tylenol (the only meds I can take for head pain right now since I'm still nursing Hollis) in my purse at all times. But when I travel, I pack a separate pill container that fits my multi-vitamins. Since I stay at home quite a lot, I don't go through the pills in my purse very quickly, so they end up expiring. A few weekends ago I was three hours from home visiting my in-laws for the day when I got a migraine. We saw my husband's dad first and that's when I took Fioricet, but the migraine didn't decrease by the time we got to his mom's house. Usually I feel the effects of Fioricet within 30 minutes (depending on if I take it with food - food helps!), but this time I felt nothing but pain and nausea. I ended up staying on their couch while everyone went out for dinner, but the pain was so bad at that point I couldn't sleep. I was popping ginger mints the whole ride home. Lesson learned - use my purse stash before the pills expire!

After that incident, I checked my huge bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol (generic brand) and realized it had expired in January! I was hoping that's why it hadn't been working too well, but I just took some new generic Tylenol for a headache yesterday and it didn't help much...probably because it's just acetaminophen.

Speaking of Tylenol, the Target bottle was about $4 cheaper than the name brand. Have any of you noticed the name brand working better than generics? If it does, it would be worth it because it's still cheaper than a prescription. I might have to try this out sometime.

Hope you all are well. Sorry I haven't been blogging much - there's not a whole lot I can try right now, so not a lot of blog material. :)