When I saw the price tag on the Pedia-Pak, I gasped: $65.95 seems pretty steep for a portable first-aid kit.
After looking through it, I think it's a steal.
The red, white and blue pack has a number of compartments, each packed not only with the items a parent needs when a child is injured (think elastic bandage, alcohol pads, iodine pads, bee-sting relief pads and bandages), but also everyday items that every parent should have on hand.
That includes children's Tylenol and Motrin, the generic equivalent of Benadryl, electrolyte mix and a bundle of various creams for everything from problem diaper rashes to antibiotic ointment, Hydrocortisone and aloe vera for sunburns.
One of the best items in this kit, however, is the book, "Emergency Medical Treatment: Infants, Children and Adults," by David Manhoff and Dr. Stephen Vogel. It slips neatly into the outer pouch and has tabs to make it easy to find the instructions you need and drawings to make it even easier to understand.
The kit also contains instruments, from standard tweezers to a
medicine dropper, an instant cold pack, scissors, a digital thermometer for either oral or rectal use and more. Camping families will appreciate the tick tweezers and handy identification guide.
The retail value of the items, all of them actually useful to parents, easily exceeds the cost of the kit.
Mostly, though, I like the superb portability. It's lightweight and compact, so you can throw it in the trunk when you head for an outing or put it on a handy shelf at home. It's nowhere near as big as a diaper bag or a standard woman's purse.
And it brings everything together. There's no searching through cupboards for that one medicine or ointment — it's all laid out in the pockets in easy-grab form.
There's an interesting story behind the development of this product. B.J. Hilles was in the process of adopting a child from China. She was concerned about the trip home with a child who may not have had adequate medical care, although she knew her skills as a nurse would see her through.
But because she is a nurse, she also had plenty of material for her imagination to fret over during the waiting period of the adoption, while she was trying to get things ready.
She set out to buy a first-aid kit but couldn't find one designed with children in mind.
Hilles and her pediatrician talked about what such a bag should contain. And because she did not know, at that time, exactly how old her daughter-to-be, Olivia, was, she expanded it to make a kit suitable for a child of any age.
That was the birth of Pedia-Pak, a parent/kid-friendly product that is worth a look.
More information is available from the Web site, www.pediapak.com.
E-mail: lois@desnews.com