Time to Check Those First-Aid Supplies

Remember that old party game--we played it as kids, mostly--where one person says, "I'm going on a camping trip, and I'm going to take an aardvark (or something starting with the letter A)," and then the next person goes and adds a letter B thing, and you go around the room adding on for each letter of the alphabet (I'm going to take an aardvark, a bicycle, a chainsaw, a dinosaur...etc.)?

Well, if I had the letter N, I would add, "Neosporin" for mine now.

In fact, I already have it ready. For Spring Break, we actually are going up to the mountains to go hiking, which is close to camping, and I'm going to need it.

Except I don't do the whole tents-and-bugs-and-no-bathrooms thing, so we are renting a nice log cabin for the week, and taking a couple of the boys' friends along. I'm not a "roughing it" type of girl.

But I'm still taking my new Neosporin Pain Relief Ointment and my new spray Neosporin Neo To-Go, and plenty of bandages, too.

Because, you know, I'll have my accident-prone Rhino with me, the one who just two weeks ago was in the Emergency Room again because he was slammed into the wall of the gym playing basketball during P.E.

He's fine now--just a minor concussion and some gluey gel-stuff sealing the gash in his eyebrow while his Dad and I shared a scary Oh my God, that could have been his eye! moment in the ER.

But that Neosporin Neo To Go spray has been a godsend, as the folks at Mom Central and Neosporin sent it to me to review just in time for us to have it around for that scary eyebrow wound.

And it earned big points in my book. That little spray is really conveient, since it's not messy at all to use, and protable, so we can keep it in the car. And of course, it's antibiotic just like the ointment we all know and love, and just as soothing, and I can apply it just by spraying it (I'm super careful with anything near his eyes, of course), so I don't have to probe his cut with my fingers to put it on. Big thumbs-up on the Neo to Go spray!

I keep the Neosporin Pain Relief Ointment in the medicine cabinet at home with the band-aids, so I can apply that when I need to, too. The Rhino also had some cuts and scrapes on his knees from his wall-slamming basketball incident, and we used the regular ointment for those. They have some Neo to Go Ointment packs if you prefer the ointment, which are individual-use packs you can slip into your first-aid kit.

All of that applying ointment reminded me, as the good folks at Neosporin want to remind you, that there IS an expiration date on those topical antibiotic ointments that, according to a recent study, 40% of you have in your medicine cabinets, too.

You really do want to check to make sure that antibiotic stuff hasn't expired, so that you'll be ready now that it is (today, officially!) Spring, and the kids will be going outside more to play.

Do you know, when I went to put my new Neosporin ointment and Neosporin Neo to Go spray away, I found some tubes that had expired in 2005?

And that's with having the Rhino in the house and needing up-to-date supplies all the time, people!

Just for fun, why don't some of you check and tell me how old the oldest thing in your medicine cabinet is right now? Just leave a comment, don't be shy!


I proudly wrote this post as part of a Mom Central and Johnson's blog tour!