More nightmares of my holiday travels :-)

My daughter and I both had colds when we left home to travel.  No real
problem, but after 2 weeks, decided to seek medical attention.  After
waiting 2 days for an appointment, my daughter (9 1/2  months) was
diagnosed with an ear infection.  The doctor prescribed Amoxicillin.  I
immediately asked if there was any dairy in it and described a problem we
had with carmel coloring in some prescription vitamins that was dairy
sourced.  He didn't know, but suspected there was not.

I filled out the appropriate questionaire at the pharmacy and indicated a
dairy allergy for my daughter.  I didn't ask the pharmacist then about
the ingredients, but should have.  After about a day and half of giving
her the med, her eczema was terrible, she was spitting up, and generally
more cranky than with just the ear infection.  Back to the pharmacy to
find out what's in this stuff.  The PharmD was actually pretty helpful,
but we still couldn't conclusively determine if there was anything dairy
- nothing obvious, but had flavorings and such.

It's now New Year's Day and it's getting much worse.  All the doctor's
offices are closed, so I called home to the advice nurse at our ped's
office.  She was a bit skeptical of the situation but at least nice about
it.  Told me to take her back to the doc there to see if she really was
having an allergic reaction since we didn't know if it might be the
penicillin itself as this was the first time with antibiotics.

Friday, we called the pharmaceutical company to try to find out.  They
weren't all that helpfull off the cuff and I didn't have time to wait for
them to research it.  I will on Monday.  I did specifically ask if it was
made on the same line as the chewable tablets since those list lactose as
an ingredient.  We also had found a web site for another pharm company
that listed their capsules as gluten and lactose free, but neither the
suspension or chewables.

The real fun came when I finally got the on-call doctor at our ped's
office to call me back.  This guy all but called me a nut job for
thinking that the eczema breakout had anything whatsoever to do with the
amoxicillin.  Since she didn't have hives, it was "obviously" not the
amox and "of course" there's no dairy in it.  They "use amoxicillin to
treat allergic and asthmatic kids all the time - even those with dairy
allergies".  Since he has been doing this for over 40 years, he obviously
knows best even though he has never even seen my daughter (and won't if I
have anything to say about it!)  I was told that one has nothing to do
with the other and just treat the eczema they way I normally would.
Well, I normally treat it by keeping the both of us strictly dairy free!
When we do this successfully, she has no eczema.  I could not get this
man to listen to me.  I was so furious.

So, meanwhile, I'm giving my daughter something to treat an ear infection
that is obvously making her miserable.  Her legs are just red and scaly.
She has allergy shiners that she has never had before.  She can't sleep.
Has terrible gas and loose stools.  But I have everyone telling me to
give her this stuff for the ear infection.  The pharmacist said to stop
the med for a day and see if she clears up, but I knew it would take
longer than a day and I didn't want her to fly with the ears hurting.

Has anyone else had a problem with dairy in meds?  I still don't know if
this might be some other ingredient or the amox itself.  I can't get to
see our doctor till Monday and want as much ammo as possible.

Kathy