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Emergency Medical Kit

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The regular depiction in TV serials of a doctor arriving home almost instantaneously when summoned on telephone to attend to an emergency, could not be farther from reality. Most good doctors do not attend home calls, and the chances of getting one in the middle of the night when you are down with an attack of incessant vomiting or an allergy could be well neigh impossible.
It makes perfect sense to keep some medicines at home or carry on travel. Here are some tips on how to make your own emergency medicine kit:
1. Keep medicines that you are familiar with, and preferably, have taken before, so that it is not a first timer during an emergency and that too in a new place.  If you take a new antibiotic while on travel, and come down with hives, things can get rather complicated.
2. If you are not good with tongue twisting drug names, put them in labelled envelopes according to indications. For example, you could have paracetamol tablets in an envelope labelled “Fever, Body pains”, loperamide in one labelled “Loose motions” or Avomine in one labelled “Motion sickness”.
3. Keep them in your hand baggage, in a separate pouch or flap. The best of medicines kept in the checked-in-luggage will be of no use to you should you need it in an emergency.
4. Know your special needs: For example an asthmatic should ensure he travels with his bronchodilators, those with heart disease must have their nitrates, those with diabetes should carry not just the blood sugar lowering drugs but also some sweets or sugars, in case their head spins due to a drop in blood sugar.
A practical step would be to try making your medical kit to deal with:
1. Allergy, hives, itching, running nose, watery eyes, brochospasm: Allegra/ Alspan/ Cetriz/Avil
2. Loose motions (watery) : loperamide (Imodium)
3. Acidity/ heartburn: Digene or Gelusil tablets/ Ranitidine or Omeprazole
4. Nausea or vomiting : Domperidone or ondansetron
5. Motion sickness : Avomine
6. Infections: Tummy or urine infections, fever: Ciprofloxacin or ofloxacin/ cephalosporins Throat or chest infections: cephaloporins or amoxycillin or Septran
7. Fever, body aches, sprains, injury: Paracetamol/Brufen
8. Crampy pain in abdomen or painful periods: Spasmindon, Cyclopam/ Meftal spas are some antispasmodics
9. Band-aids and antiseptic creams for abraisions and hurts.
10. Laxatives ( Isabgula husk, lactitol or PEG pouches)
Laxatives are particularly important for people with chronic constipation who travel overseas. One tends to unknowingly suppress bowel evacuation during long journeys, especially flights. Further, the diet in most western countries tend to constipate as they are low on fibre and often contain cocoa.
It is not uncommon therefore for stools to harden, causing anal fissures and piles.
It is indeed paradoxical that despite mushrooming of hospitals and clinics, getting a good doctor when in need is a matter of rare luck.
(I have avoided commercial names of medicines, which your pharmacist will help you with)

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