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Christi's avatar

This was perfectly timely for my family, Melinda. My needle-phobic kid who has a history of serious infection needed to go to urgent care yesterday and we faced a series of increasingly invasive tests similar to the ones you described. When the nurse came in for a throat swab, I asked for a proactive application of lidocaine on both of Kid's arms. Twenty minutes later when the strep test was negative, the nurse was able to draw blood easily and my kid couldn't feel a thing. I wouldn't have thought to ask for it in time without your newsletter.

We usually bring our Buzzy (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HQ1LJIS) but since I drove her straight from school to urgent care unexpectedly, I didn't have it with me. I may have mentioned this device before on these forums - I heard a TED talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_IWhJvu0jU) from Buzzy's inventor, Dr. Amy Baxter, that changed my opinion of the importance of pain management in routine pediatric medical care.

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Mary's avatar

Thank you so much for this! Looking forward to the next piece on strategies to help kids

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