This is an odd request, but is there a UK or Canadian equivalent of drugstore.com? My father-in-law is in his last days suffering from the triple whammy of lung cancer, bladder cancer and liver failure. We are trying to just keep him as comfortable and happy as possible. He has a lot of issues with his stomach now and remembers taking milk of magnesia in solid form as a young boy – for some reason he is really fixated on this as being what he needs for his stomach. I figure the placebo effect alone of him getting what he wants is well worth my time. But I checked with a pharmacist and they don’t sell the solid (one large block, not the little chewables) in the US anymore, but apparaently they do in the UK. Is there a place any UK Dopers know where I can order some online?
Please note, I’m not trying to do something illegal by getting drugs outside the US. It’s milk of magneisa for heavens sake. But I realize there may be some law against this, or I may be entirely unable to acquire it. Any input on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve only seen it as a liquid here in the UK - a solution of magnesium hydroxide. I’ll check in the local pharmacy tomorrow, unless anyone else posts something sooner.
I could even mail some to you if it’s actually available over-the-counter.
I asked about this in a couple of local pharmacies today and was met with disbelief all round. Nobody had come across MoM as a solid block. They suggested plenty of packaged, flavo(u)red tablets but I’m sure you know about those anyway.
I’ll keep my eyes open but I don’t anticipate much success. Sorry.
Thanks so much for looking into it. I’ve personally never seen it either and would have written it off as my F-I-L remembering it wrong if the pharmicist hadn’t looked it up. I’m still searching for it online to no avail.
According to my F-I-L’s description (I don’t know which brandname this was sold under) it was a semi-soft block of medicine you could easily cut a ‘dose’ off of with a knife. He decribed it as slightly smaller than a block of cream cheese. Like I said I never saw this stuff myself, but apparently it was manufactured this way once in the US. And yeah I know he can probably get same or better results from a host of other OTC medications, but his personality type is one that likes to always know ‘the best way’ of doing things. And since he’s not going to be able to tell me ‘I told you so’ much longer I wanted to see if I could lay hands on some of this stuff for him.