Monday, March 31, 2014

Crazy expensive rash cream

I don't think I've talked about this before, but when baby gets a diaper rash it hurts for everyone. Thankfully little baby hasn't gotten too many (knocking on wood now). But my toddler used to get them, bad! I think some of that might have been the season - in the winter time in northern Alabama, it is cold! They don't get a whole lot of time to run around sans diaper, or even just air time on the changing table. And I think the lack of exposure and airing out caused some diaper rashes to be worse than they otherwise would be.

     Eventually we asked the doctor for help. The topical creams are great at prevention, but not excellent at curing one, and curing it fast. So he wrote up a great prescription for something we didn't know and sent it off to the pharmacy. To this day I have no idea what is in it... but man does it work! It's the thickest paste concoction I've ever seen, and once slathered on, the rash disappeared. Wonderful!

     What wasn't wonderful was the price tag. Even with insurance, it was around $50. For a small tub of the stuff! Granted that's more than a little tube of diaper cream off the shelf, but it still hurt our checkbook. I think the reason it's so expensive is that the pharmacy has to actually make the stuff. It doesn't come in pill form for them to just dispense, so all that extra effort involved drives the price up. It's what they call a compound prescription (I think).

     Now since then we've been told some suggestions to make a homemade diaper cream. These usually involve combining neosporin, diaper cream, and anti-fungal cream. We haven't tried that, but it might work. If things get terrible again, though, I will probably shell out the cash for the good stuff. It's worth it not to have a child who screams every time she wets herself.

No comments:

Post a Comment