Augmenting Augmentin

Jackson has E. Coli in his urine and kidneys, which the doctors inform me to be quite dangerous if not remedied. It's no big deal, just antibiotics, but it could likely cause kidney cell death if the E. Coli aren't dealt with. I have been avoiding antibiotics...
Not exactly my idea of fun: He just had two massive ear infections that threatened to burst his eardrums, so we had a round of antibiotics for that. A week later, he got the E. Coli infection, and we had to treat with antibiotics again. This week (just a week after we finished the second round of antibiotics), the E. Coli are back! Or perhaps they never left. So we've started antibiotics again - This time we're going with Augmentin, because it's a weaker antibiotic than the others, since he has fewer units of the E. Coli in his urine (meaning, the infection is hopefully on its way out, not recurring).

I was about to administer his first dose, reading the information on the drug, when ASPARTAME stuck out on the label like a goose in a grape barrel. They sweeten their damn stuff with aspartame? You're joking! No, they were not.

I called the doc and asked whether I should still administer, or if there were another option. He said that the risk of aspartame toxicity is better than the risk of going with another antibiotic, because they'd be stronger, and would be more likely to promote resistance. I agree with him, frustratedly.

GSK is the company that manufactures Augmentin, and after scouring their website and several others I could find no way to contact them by email. ARG. Finally, I found tfX - a consumer group against trans fats - and they had barraged GSK for adding transfats to their originally trans-fat-free child formula. I found the email address they had used, thank goodness, and let them know that until they resolved this ridiculous issue, I would try my hardest to remove as much business from them as I possibly could.

It isn't that aspartame is so dangerous, it's not that at all: It's just that I firmly believe that especially in medicine, there should be NOTHING in the concoction that isn't ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED to help resolve the problem. My son's problem was not "he won't drink funny-tasting liquids", rather his problem was "he has a bacterial infection".

The issue of whether or not to use aspartame is one I would like as my own choice. And I have already decided "no". But the fact that this company put it in just for kicks and giggles makes me mad, and I don't want to use them. Gah.