Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back

I took a sick day yesterday. I would have sold my soul for some Contac Day & Night (second one from the right, now called Contac Cold+Flu Day & Night for whatever reason), but was forced to settle for Tylenol Cold. Contac, in my experience, does an excellent job of mitigating cold/flu symptoms for 5 days at which point the cold/flu has usually run its course. Tylenol didn't do its job and confused me altogether. Here's my comparison:

• Contac gives you 5 sets of 4 pills - 3 for the day and 1 for the night (conveniently colored yellow and blue so that you don't mix them up). Tylenol has 6 sets of 2 pills for both the day and the night time medicine. They recommend that you take two daytime pills every 6 hours, and two nighttime pills before going to sleep. For a given 24 hour period, I will have taken half of the total daytime pills and 1/6 of the nighttime pills. That means I'm going to run out of daytime pills 4 days before I run out of nighttime pills. Winner: Contac
• The nighttime pill for Contac knocks you out cold. Fast. I've had people tell me things that I don't remember from when I was taking the night medicine. Oh, and you sleep like a baby. The Tylenol nighttime pills took about 3 hours to kick in and then lasted for the full 6 hours. Since I went to bed at 11, I woke up at 8 making me late for work. Also, I had awful nightmares and woke up several times during the night. Winner: Contac
• Here's where things get a little tricky for Contac: the daytime pill. Contac takes care of all symptoms incredibly well, while Tylenol only partially takes care of symptoms. Contac, however makes me light-headed while Tylenol doesn't. I think that being light-headed is a fair price to pay for alleviating my cold symptoms. Winner: Contac
• Tylenol uses an "instant refreshing feeling" (read: mint coating) as a major marketing ploy. I didn't feel refreshed. Contac has no marketing ploys, their medicine just works. Winner: Contac

Everyone who I've referred Contac to swears by it. Its too bad that its sold in such short supply in drugstores, but I know that I'll be stocking up for future sick days. Better to be safe than sorry.

Tags: Medicine, Sick Day, Contac, Tylenol