with Ferenc Molmar, MD
Q. My 5-year-old son has a very large purple cyst in the middle of his forehead. It does not interfere with his activities, but it looks a sight and makes people not notice what a handsome child he is. Lately he has begun to pick at it, and I think its presence distresses him. Should we take him to a dermatologist and have it removed, or just hope that my son outgrows it?
A. Healthy children normally engage in rough-and-tumble games, and it is not unusual for them to have bruises and scars and facial lesions. In your son’s case the cyst appears to be benign and naturally occurring. Instead of indulging your son’s vanity by removing a harmless growth, it is far better for you to teach him to accept it and learn to live with it. Boys who are overly concerned with their looks at this age typically grow up to be homosexuals.
Q. I have a pair of twins, now turning 11, who have shared a bedroom since they were infants. I should mention that one is a boy and one is a girl. Although they look and act very much alike and even wear each other’s clothes, I am concerned that they will soon become adolescents and look very different to each other. Is there any way we can slow this down, or minimize the ill effects of puberty? Also, my son has lately become very curious about sanitary napkins and I wonder if it is healthy for him to see his sister get her period.
A. What you are suggesting about “minimizing the ill effects of puberty” alarms me greatly. Such treatments if they exist are probably illegal where you live. (I see by your postmark it is Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.) I believe it is always a mistake for children to share bedrooms with those of the opposite sex, as they will absorb many of their brother’s or sister’s mannerisms, which usually leads to homosexuality. Now is the time when you should seriously think about putting your son in a military academy, where fresh air and daily drilling will clear his mind of “Kotex curiosity.”
Q. When my grandmother died in our house recently at the age of 95, she left many vials of medicines. Most of these will not expire for another year or two. I don’t want to leave them around where the children will get into them, but I’m afraid that if I lock them up in a cupboard I’ll forget about them and they will expire. Should I give the medicines away to Goodwill, or a reputable charity?
A. Last question first: no “reputable charity,” as you put it, can or will accept donations of pharmaceuticals, whatever the source. Ideally you should have destroyed all this medication as soon as your grandmother died.
Many people wrongly assume that a bottle of Doxycyline prescribed for one relative will be perfectly suitable for someone else. That assumption is neither ethical medicine nor considerate of your healthcare providers. After all, your doctors spent many years and much money learning their profession, while you presumably did not.
I regret to observe that self-prescribing by laymen happens all the time these days, partly due to Internet pages such as WebMD which encourage people to diagnose themselves. This is part of our culture’s current wave of permissiveness, which carries such degeneracy as homosexuality and transvestism in its train.
Author: Cooper Ward
Cooper Ward hails from Lake Plains, IL, which he describes as “the flattest place east of Nebraska.” He enjoys watching cooking shows and listening to semi-classical music.