The innumeracy of the American public worries me.
I picked up some Frontline Top Spot today for my dog and my cat. The
thirty-ish lady in the office (receptionist? Vet Tech?) said that I
could save a lot of money by buying the extra-large-dose ampules and
using a syringe to meter it out. She gave me a syringe barrel (no
needle) and a plastic medicine bottle to hold the remainder of the
ampule contents until the following month. The ampule is actually a
"blister pack applicator" that one snaps open but cannot reshut.
According to her the dose rate for all cats is "half a cc" and for my
dog's size it's "a bit over a cc and a half". She wrote this down for me
on a label she put on the medicine bottle. I noticed that she had
written for the cat ".05cc" and for the dog "1.34cc". I pointed our her
misplaced decimal point in the first instance and commented "and the
second one must be a little less than you told me since 1.34 is less
than one and a half." I got a blank stare in return. I also said that
"cc" was archaic and that even the FDA was now using "mL". But she
could, I told her, use "cm3" with the 3 raised if she wanted. She said
that if they did not use "cc" most of their customers would not know
what they meant.
The syringe barrel (labeled Pfizer) that she gave me shows that the
scale is in "mL". The ampule gives the contents only in fluid ounces!
Specifically, this pack of medicine contains 0.136 fl oz of medicine.
That, of course, is 4 mL.
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
