About a child

I’ve had some interesting OTC consultations recently. For example:

• The mother who brought her 15 year old son into the pharmacy to buy some sleeping tablets. Apparently her son hadn’t been sleeping properly for three weeks and wanted something to help. I asked what they thought could be causing the sleepless nights but I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t going to tell me with his mum there.

So I printed off the PRODIGY PIL on insomnia and asked them to follow the advice in there before resorting to OTC sleeping tablets. I haven’t seen them since but whether that’s because the problem is cured or they have gone elsewhere to buy some tablets, I simply don’t know.

• The mother who brought her 11 year old in with monthly migraines. It seemed that these were linked to the onset of menstruation and she had been to the GP practice to ask for advice since it usually ended up in her daughter being sent home from school in tears once a month.

The GP had simply recommended pain killers for the time being and I felt mum was after some further reassurance. So again I used PRODIGY to print off the relevant PILs and recommended some quick and easy painkillers that the daughter could take to school to use as soon as she felt the onset of the headache. So we will wait to see how she gets on next month.