A Complaint About Cold Medicine

While we're on the subject of weirdness tickers, I am allergic to Nutra Sweet.  I can taste it immediately, and it makes my eyes tear and I get an instant headache.  I've been that way forever.  I can also smell it.  So, for example, if I'm sitting in a lecture hall and someone four seats over is chewing Extra or Trident, I can smell it -- not the gum itself, but the sweetener.  It's bizarre, isn't it?  (When I was pregnant, I could also smell Mick's Diet Coke all day long.  It led to some wicked arguments, because it would make me sicker than I already was.   He could have had a DC the minute he dropped me off at class, and four hours later after he'd had garlic and sardines and peanut butter and whatever else to mask it, I'd still smell the God-forsaken Diet Coke in his breath.  The whole phenomenon was awful.)

Although I am allergic only to Nutra Sweet, I can taste (and usually smell) the other artificial sweeteners just as instantly.  And they all taste awful to me, and I need an immediate and substantial chaser to get the taste out of my mouth.  Like a sandwich, or a Snickers bar -- something to eat, not drink, and something that requires more than just a bite or two to finish.

Well, here's the point of my story:  I am fighting a nasty cold right now, and finally last night around 10, I broke down and asked Mick to run down to the kitchen to see if he could find some medicine -- Nyquil or something similar -- for me.  He happened to have Mucinex in his travel bag in our closet, so he gave me that.  And wouldn't you know it, the darn stuff has artificial sweeteners in it?!

Here's where I get pissed, and pardon my language, but why must they assume that if we're sick that we want artificial sweeteners?  It's not as if we're choosing DIET cold medicine; we're choosing cold medicine.  I can handle the harsh taste of cough syrup, but I can't handle the awful taste of the artificial sweetener.  I realize I am a distinct and severe minority, but I don't understand the need to make medicine sugar free.  Either leave the sweetener out, or use sugar!   No one is drinking Mucinex because it tastes good, and switching the artificial sweetener for none or sugar wouldn't change that.  Really.

So I was in bed and had the Mucinex, and then had to follow that with the only thing I randomly had handy -- about 8 Sour Patch Kids. 

The good thing is that the Mucinex worked (although only for four hours); the bad thing is that the Sour Patch Kids didn't, and I woke up still tasting the sweetener.

Grrrrrr.

I can't stand this new "everyone is on a diet" thing in our country.  You can't find regular whole milk anywhere except the grocery store anymore, and now even my cough syrup is diet.  I'm pretty confident no one got obese because they had whole milk in their cereal or Mucinex every four hours for a few days...

Now I need to decide if the Mucinex worked well enough to try it again, or if I'm going to switch to something less awful tasting.

And that's enough with the grumpy posts today.  Thanks for reading!

--Jen

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