The Vallecillo’s

FYI: You will most-likely start seeing older posts show up on the blog throughout the week. I have many entries in draft mode that I plan on finishing and posting to the blog while at the hospital this week…hopefully

I’ve been rather “under the weather” for the past few weeks, thus I’ve had to go through the same confusing process I seem to go trough every time I get a cold. It is one of those things we all go through, but for some strange reason we never do anything to educate ourselves and be prepared for that inevitable next time when we have to do it again.

I’m talking about cold/cough medicine selection. Lets make it easy and just pick a popular brand, say “Robutussin”. So you find yourself in the “cold medicine” aisle of your favorite store and stare at about 30 different products (if you count liquid, pills and drops) trying to decide which one is the right one for you. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find this to be a rather daunting task because after glancing at all these products I will come up with about 5 that seem to be the “right” one for my symptoms. Who is marketing these remedies, and why haven’t they been fired yet?

First there are the confusing combination of terms like “expectorant“, “cough suppressant“, “antihistamine” and “decongestant“. I know you may think that you know exactly what all of these terms mean (I know I did), but they are worth reviewing since they are key to understanding the Robitussin riddle.

Then there are the confusing symptoms like “cough”, “chest congestion” and just plain ol’ “congestion”. Has anyone ever had “chest congestion” without a “cough”? Me neither, but there is a Robitussin for “cough”, one for “chest congestion” AND one for “cough and congestion”. Oh, and did I mention they all have very logical names like CF, PM, DM, PE, etc.?

Heck, for all I know I may be alone in all of this…so I better stop before I come to the sad realization that I might just be a moron