Kiddie Migraines: A Headache in Your Stomach?
Migraineur. Sounds like a job for a senior specialist in some artisanal craft, doesn’t it? Such a misleadingly pleasant sounding word. However, ‘migraineur’ describes a more-common-than-you-think entity affecting an invisible population of child and adult sufferers of the misery that is…
The Lowdown On Hiccups
Hiccups are like divine comedy, aren’t they? In seconds, a paroxysmal hurk can render a child most serene, or an adult most stern into something hilarious. While they rarely pose anything more than a sociodietary awkward moment, hiccups do cause…
Spy A Stye In A Little Eye? Here’s Why.
Styes are like pimples on your eyelid, right? We should squeeze those bumps there, and get out the stuff inside, and that’ll help them get better, won’t it? If a stye goes on long enough, it could damage a kid’s vision, couldn’t it? Seriously, are they called “pigstyes?”
The bumps that occur on…
Good News! A Better Way to Treat the Dreaded Penis-In-Zipper
Pity the boy who has one of the more tragic types of wardrobe malfunction. Usually it goes down, so to speak, like this: a prepubertal boy, perhaps going commando (sans underwear) or dressing hurriedly, traps some part of his male anatomy in the working teeth of his zipper while closing…
Pica: When Kids Eat (and Eat!) Non-Foods
Infants and toddlers are like wobbly ninjas, focused maniacally on tasting and mouthing items from coins to blocks to the odd flotsam and jetsam that lives on living room floors….
Odd But True: Headbanging in Kids
Positive Bullwinkle sign, is what we called it. When our oldest was an infant, he would take his hand, with fingers and thumb in full extension, and would frequently bonk the right side of his head (always the right) in the minutes before he corked off to sleep. The whole thing made him look…
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Best Treatment (for) Warts And All
“Aw, man!” said a 5th grader I know well (my daughter who rules the world) recently, “I thought I had a rock in my shoe, but I have a wart on my foot..and it’s killing me!”
Right. In the main, warts are a visual problem, their stigma causing distress of the self-conscious…
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Hark! The Bark of Croup
Croup. Here it comes. Oh, that stop-you-in-your tracks cough makes it that most anomatopoeic of illnesses.
Variously described as barking, brassy, or seal-like, the cough of croup and its accompanying noises are most frequently heard–at a great distance–during the late fall and early…
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Deserving of Your Attention: Teen Abuse of ADHD Meds
I’m covering this topic on the occasion of the opening of NIDA’s National Drug Facts Week to raise awareness — for teens and the adults in their lives — of something about which there are a lot of myths: prescription drug abuse, including ADHD meds.
Not too long ago, a patient of…
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Getting Ahead of Flakes in Kids, Part 1: Cradle Cap
It doesn’t really matter how old you are, but an itchy, flaky, or itchy-flaky scalp can be a drag. Seborrhea dermatitis is often the culprit…
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