The Hunt For H2O2

Dad can't hear a thing!  He needs help!  Kris plays pharmacist and tries to figure out the ratio of water to Super Strength H2O2

We are having a fantastic summer with my parents and my sister & family visiting us.  Unfortunately, my dad has an ear infection.  Go to the doctor?  Ummm, well, we decided it would be better just to get advice from a doctor friend and do the treatment ourselves.  OK, no problem, we bought ear drops and then all we needed was some hydrogen peroxide so he can flush his ears.  Our doctor friend tells us to go to the pharmacy and ask for "H2O2" to get hydrogen peroxide.  OK, so we go.  No H2O2.  OK, we try another pharmacy.  Nope.  Another...nope.  Another...nope.  At the fourth one we got a yes!  Yippee!  They were confused and asked me what we wanted it for, then said all they had was 50% strength.  In the US it is more like 3% or something like that.  OK, I figure we can dilute it, so I say I want it.

"How much?" she asks.

Hmmmm, "About this much...?" I say, holding my hands up to measure the height of a small bottle.  She laughs.  And then I ask, well, how do you measure it?

Finally she asks, "One hundred mililiters or two hundred?"  Ah, there we go, something more specific.  I ask for two hundred.  We sit to wait...wait...people come in...wait...people leave...wait...a car hits a motorcycle over in the street...wow...wait...thirty minutes later a pharmacist comes out to tell us that H2O2 was in the computer, but actually, they don't have it after all.  Hmmm, this is the reverse of the spaghetti sauce incident, very interesting.  We struck out.

Eventually (don't ask how) we end up with a small bottle of...who knows...maybe 50% or maybe100% H2O2.  Yikes.  So Kris and Dad sit down and do the math, how on earth do we make it into 3%?  We get out bottled water, our newly acquired melt-threw-steel-strength hydrogen peroxide, a measuring cup...here goes nothing!  OK, now we've got what we think might possibly be about the right mixture.  I hope so because Dad squeezed it into his ear!!

The next day I asked at three more places, still no hydrogen peroxide.  Who knew it would be so hard to find?  You can ask for prescription strength just about anything and have no problem, but hydrogen peroxide is apparently a no-go!

Our city is a Bring-Your-Own-Hydrogen-Peroxide-Zone.  Good to know...

Measuring cup...luke warm water...

Be careful, this stuff is dangerous!  We make our own label so no one will think this is a normal bottle of water...

OK, here we go...

Dad!  Does it burn?