Read the Labels!

As Britney sang, "Oops...I did it again".

Last week I was thick into my morning routine. The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth. Due to some medication I'm taking, I have an extremely dry mouth. So a few weeks ago I found a toothpaste that is supposed to help fight the bacteria that loves to grow in a dry mouth. That morning, I picked up the toothpaste, opened the lid, and squeezed about 3/4" of the stuff onto my brush.

Something seemed a little strange that morning. I didn't remember the opening to the toothpaste being smaller than a normal toothpaste's opening. I nearly had the toothbrush into my mouth, when I picked up the toothpaste tube and turned it over.

Another half-second and I would have been brushing my teeth with hemorrhoid ointment. That's not the first time something like this has happened to me...or rather, I caused it to happen to me.

As a teenager, I stayed at my cousin's house quite a bit. One morning, I grabbed a tube of their toothpaste, squeezed it on my brush, and started brushing away. "Gawd!", I thought..."What in the heck kind of toothpaste do these folks use?" It tasted absolutely horrible, with a greasy feel to it. I picked up the tube--I sure didn't ever want to buy this stuff. Well, folks...again, it wasn't toothpaste. It was Groom! Groom was men's hair cream. And it sure made a nasty-tasting toothpaste.

When I was bike-riding age, I had hopped onto my bicycle to take a ride. I don't remember the circumstances, but this bike had a couple of spokes that were broken on one end. I ended up having a bike wreck in which I wouldn't have even gotten hurt except one of those broken spokes somehow completely punctured my right Achilles tendon. That left me with two holes on either side of that tendon. The first thing I thought about doing was running into the bathroom to get some Mercurochrome or Merthiolate to hopefully keep the wound from getting infected.

I grabbed the little brown bottle out of the medicine cabinet and quickly applied the stuff to the two punctures. AND THEN I YELLED! I expected either one of those antiseptics to sting a little, but not like this. When I looked at my foot, I didn't see the usual red of either one of those antiseptics. What I saw was the medicine thickening into two waxy lumps over the wounds. I grabbed the bottle and THEN looked at the label. I hadn't used either Mercurochrome or Merthiolate. What I used was Compound W--the wart remover! I think that stuff was eating my flesh from the inside out!

Some years back, I took a shower (and washed my hair) using dog shampoo. I wondered why it didn't lather very much. Needless to say, I didn't have fleas for a couple of weeks, and my coat was soft and shiny! And, yes, it was an accident.

Probably 30+ years ago, we were visiting Mom and Dad. My little sister was still a teenager, so she was also still living at home at that time. Before she got home, I had found an unlabeled bottle of nail polish on a kitchen shelf. Just to see what the color looked like, I painted my toenails. After a half-hour that stuff hadn't even began drying! So when my sister got home, I asked her what kind of nail polish that was on the kitchen shelf. She told me it wasn't nail polish--it was her lip gloss!

I try to be very careful with my medicines, but even as careful as I am, I sometimes mess up. The last time I did this was a few months ago when I took my usual morning dose of blood pressure medicine, Verapamil. By the time I got to work, I was so sleepy that I thought I'd fall asleep at my desk. When I got home, I picked up the medicine bottle from the kitchen counter to put it away, and happened to glance at the label. What I took that morning was not Verapamil like I thought. It was Hydrocodone (acetaminophen and codeine). The dosages of Verapamil and Hydrocodonee we have are identical unless you look close enough to see the imprints. So now I keep the Hydrocodone buried deep into the cabinet and my Verapamil in a separate location with my other meds.

I'm not the only one in the family to not be careful at times. My granny was famous for her homemade pies. She made a couple of pies for my uncle and aunt who were coming to visit from Alabama. As always, she sprayed the pie pans with Pam and finished making the pies. After she got them baked, she realized she had not sprayed the pie pans with Pam, but had instead sprayed them with Lemon Pledge! I suppose that might not taste too bad with a lemon meringue pie.

There is one thing I make sure I check each time. I usually keep a bottle of eye drops on my nightstand since I have very dry eyes (especially at night). I always, always read the label to make sure I'm not putting Super Glue in my eyes.