Hadn't heard of this before today, message from our pediatrician, thought I'd pass it on:
Please check your medicine cabinets and remove all infant/Children's Tylenol/Motrin/Benadryl/Zyrtec produced by McNeil Pharmaceuticals from your shelves. 
 
McNeil Pharmaceuticals has issued a VOLUNTARY recall of these products as they may not meet strict quality standards.

McNeil Consumer Healthcare Recall

True story: On the evening of 4/21, we gave our 23 month old son a tiny dose of Children's Benadryl before bed. We had noticed he was rubbing his nose and eyes a lot over the past couple of days, figured it was allergies. We called Dupage Medical to ask if it was ok to give him some of this stuff first. We gave him a dose lower than suggested on the bottle. On the morning of 4/22 (Thursday) as I was getting ready to leave the house for work, my wife asked me to come into his room. She had changed his diaper, and asked me if his dirty one looked ok. It did not, it was pitch black and super full. I thought it was a reaction to the Benadryl and went on to work. Got a call from her around 1pm, he had just vomited in the living room, and it had blood in it. She took him to DuPage Medical, and brought the latest diaper too. Doctor tested the diaper, it had blood in it. Sent us to ER at DCH. Long story short, after a barium enema, catheter, several x-rays, a nuclear scan, stomach tube, and two days straight, he fixed himself and we were released from Children's Memorial in downtown Chicago on Saturday 4/24 with no specific cause for the incident. We were transfered to Childrens around midnight on that Thurdays. They were going to "scope" him, but DCH didn't have a doctor willing to do a scope on a child that young, so they sent us to Children's. He is fine now, and the only thing the doctors can think of would be an ulcer, but even that they're not 100% sure about given some of the symptoms. The only thing I know that is fact, is that 12 hours before this started, he had Children's Benadryl for the first time ever. And on his bottle of Benadryl, the lot number is only one digit off from the public recall notice. His is 534, the recall notice is 535. So, you be the judge.... I can tell you this much though, if 534 shows up on the list, I'll be talking to a lawyer very soon. If not for the obvious reasons, but to make sure our insurance company doesn't use this for grounds to not pay the bills, which would result in my personal credit taking a hit. I saw this all the time when I use to do recourse lending. Folks who had a medical emergency, unaware their credit report was being dragged down by an unpaid medical claim they thought insurance had paid for.

My suggestion: throw it all out, no matter what the number is on the bottle! Now, I can't say the benadryl caused this, but I can't say that it didn't either. Nor can the battery of doctors say what caused it. All I can say, is that for a child who has never even had a bad cold, to be throwing up blood and passing blood not 12 hours after his first and only dose of Children's Benadryl, sure points to just one cause in my mind, especially given this new information, which wasn't public at the time. I'm willing to bet this recall gets expanded.

Glad your son is OK nc211, must have been a scary experience. Our pediatricians are downtown Chicago, a number of them on staff at Children's, glad they are on top of this. Your post reminded me to go through all the meds now that I'm home. Hopefully this recall will get out to many others.

Update: After writing the above, I went through our meds and have 4 bottles on the recall list, un-f**king believable. The lot numbers are not listed on the side of them where it says "Lot No." but are printed on the front label beneath the name on the upper right. We had three bottles of Children's Motrin (who doesn't) and one bottle of Children's Tylenol Plus.

I didn't think I'd find anything, I was wrong, please check your meds.

Thanks for posting this - I hadn't heard about it. Both our children's Motrin and our infant's Tylenol were recalled.

wow, NC, I am so happy your little one is ok. Scary stuff

If you have a lot of recalled product, to receive a refund for product(s) affected by the recall or a coupon good for future purchase, here is a form to fill out.
Refund for product affected

great thread, thanks for the info. and NC, that is some scary stuff, glad everything is okay.

Hi,
NC211 I am so glad your son is okay. What a scary experience. You're right, there is no way to know for sure if it was the Benadryl that caused his illness, but it sure the heck sounds like it did. Just too much coincidence.

I am going to check our medicine cabinet as soon as I get home. Thank you for this information.

Thanks for posting this! And NC, thanks for the story. I'm really happy that your little one is well now.

I'd gotten an e-mail about this weeks ago, but ddn't think anything of it. I'm constantly getting "recall notices" or warnings for products that turn out to be not true, so I stopped paying attention to them and chalk them all up to overzealous first-time parents....honestly, one could make a career out of investigating these things. I figured if it were true, I would see it on the news or something. Boy was I wrong! Now I'm sorry that I didn't pass it on myself

Thanks everyone, the kind comments are warmly received. Those were the toughest days of our lives. Given the fact that we're expecting number 2 in the fall, it was even tougher on mom, given her lower engery levels and such these days. Plus, she had to wait outside of the room when x-rays were being done, which was very hard for her to do. This was our first scare of this nature, and I'll never forget it for as long as I live. I had to hold my son down on the table and try to comfort him while the doctors did their thing. I won't ever forget the image of him screaming and looking at me with those tears in his eyes, saying something that sounded a lot like "what did I do? what did I do?", like he was asking why he was being punished. Just cut right through me. The worst was the nose tube that went into his stomach. I'm telling you folks, if you've bought any of this stuff over the past few weeks, don't risk it, toss it all and start over with something else.

Now comes the fun part, dealing with the insurance company and the paperwork. We've already received one statement from CDH. Let's just say, I'd like to make over a thousand dollars an hour some day too! Can't wait for the ambulance ride bill, and the two days at Children's... Aetna better be on their game, because I'm ready to do battle!! Our plan is great, but you've got to watch them like a hawk. For us to have a child, only costs us $15 out of pocket (first co-pay), but they make you jump through the hoops to get them to pay up. You'd never believe the amount of "clerical" errors cited for justification to initially deny a claim. Total scam, if you're not careful.

His second birthday is coming up in a few weeks. I'll warn all of you now, that if you need anything from Toys R' Us before the 24th, you might want to get it before I head over to wipe out the store! That little man is about to get spoiled beyond belief!!

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I am so sorry rhis happened to your son and you two. What a horrible thing for the 3 of you to go through. Atleast he is safe, thanks to his proactive parents!

Thanks Scotty, all credit goes to mom, as she was the one with the quick wits and reaction. Not to mention the strongest will of anyone I've ever seen before. 3 months pregnant, exhausted and nauseous, and didn't complain one bit about sleeping a whole 2 hours in three days in a hospital chair. Dad, on the other hand, was about to lose it with the student staff at Childrens (teaching hospital) who kept coming in the room every hour to wake him up to check his blood pressure, which was always fine, but threw him into a fit. After I finally barked on the second day "don't come back without his doctor, let the boy get some rest", the doctor finally appeared, said our boy's hemoglobin was back to nomral, and let us go. Children's wanted to do the scope procedure on Monday, and were saying we would have to stay there until then. Apparently, they don't do scope procedures on the weekend unless it's an emergency. I told the staff I wanted to hear this from his doctor. I'm not knocking Children's Memorial at all, but they do have a communication problem amongst their staff. We only saw his dedicated doctor once, for 10 minutes, when he told us we could go home for the weekend, and come back on Monday for the scope. We were told all kinds of things too. We were told he had a "meckel", didn't turn out to be the case at all. We were told we would be in the hospital for a week, not true. We were told "I'm not sure, the doctor will have to answer that" countless times. When there was no reason for the nose tube anymore, we were told he had to keep it in until Monday, I barked. Doctor stepped in and told the nurse "why would you keep that tube in?" The second they took it out, our son bounced back like a rocket! He was ready to blow that joint! And, so were his tired parents. Plus, we couldn't tell what smelled worse after 72 hours, his diaper, or his scruffy, exhausted parents! Got home, and told mom to take a seat on the bench in the shower and "don't come out until the water turns cold". 45 minutes later, she appeared, much relaxed and feeling 100x better! We have a large water heater. Me? After we put little one to bed "not hard to do at all", dad had a beer, pondered the meaning of life, and then spent the next 12 hours face down in a pillow, with the rest of his family.

NC - I too want to say thank goodness your son is OK. How absolutely terrifying and exhausting for you.

NC - Add me to the list of heavy sighs of relief. with a 4 and 6 year old, I can only imagine the horror that would be.

Although I have heard of a "schmeckle" , what exactly is a "meckel"?

Thanks Rob & Mamattorney, we're doing much better these days! I'm putting mom and son on the 6:30am plane home to NC tomorrow for a 10 day break, which should help calm the nerves even more. Nothing like a little over attention from "PaPa & NaNa" to get things back to normal!

I'm not the best to discuss or decode "doctor speak", so I'll let this link below do the talking. lpch.org

We had three of the four diagnoses exams done, the rectosigmoidoscopy being the one we didn't do. None of the exams were able to identify a meckel. The barium enema was also done to see if his lower intestine had telecoped onto itself, which it did not. I guess that is a common problem sometimes, with so much "plumbing" being packed into such a small space. The only thing we can think of is the Benadryl a few hour prior to the start of all of this.

I might be up for a beer this weekend, if anyone is interested in meeting somewhere downtown? I can't recall the place next to Bells & Whistles, but it's more my speed!

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I would SO be there NC, but I've got my crib midgets all weekend.

Good luck getting anyone on here to actually SHOW up....I'm still waiting to hear back on the Vittorio's thing

Read in the paper yesterday that the recall was strictly voluntary and a precaution. Said there might be a higher level of active ingredient than there should be. No evidence found that that is the case though.

Glad to hear everyone is well.

From District 41

"McNeil Consumer Healthcare has announced a recall of some over-the-counter liquid Children's and Infant's products. According to McNeil's press release, "McNeil Consumer Healthcare is initiating this voluntary recall because some of these products may not meet required quality standards.This recall is not being undertaken on the basis of adverse medical events." If you have any of these liquid Children's or Infant's products: Tylenol, Tylenol Plus, Motrin, Motrin Cold, Zyrtec, or Benadryl (generics are not involved in this recall) products at home, you may have a recalled product. This can be checked by comparing the NDC numbers of your products at home with the list of NDC numbers affected by the recall. The company advises to discontinue use of these recalled products. You can get this information by calling McNeil at 1-888-222-6036 or by checking the website www.mcneilproductrecall.com.

If you have provided the school with any of these medications for your child, the school nurse will not administer it. Please replace the medication with a generic product."

quote:

I'm still waiting to hear back on the Vittorio's thing

I'm in Portland through Monday, perhaps Clamato has some openings in his social calender