If you are a parent, I am sure you have had to administer the dreaded oral antibiotics that taste disgusting once or twice to your child. As you know, it is not fun or pretty. Sometimes it takes bribery and serious coercion to get the medicine down. Well, Tiara has to take 17 pills a day to stay alive and she doesn’t know how to swallow them. Ugh. So every morning and evening for the last 13 years she has been required to take medicine whether she likes it or not. The process is always the same. I divide the above meds into 4 groups, crush them in our hospital quality pill crusher, and put them into spoonfuls of soy vanilla ice cream. She is allergic to dairy. Yummmm. As you can imagine, I am sure the concoction tastes beyond disgusting. Nevertheless she doesn’t have a choice. If she doesn’t take her seizure meds she is pretty much guaranteed a trip to the hospital and a status seizure. Last year she had the stomach flu and couldn’t keep her morning meds down. I called her neurologist and she told us to drive straight to UCLA because she believed Tiara would go into “status” just by missing one dose of medicine. So we got in the car, my mother in law came with us, and she puked all the way to Los Angeles. Once we arrived she did start seizing out of control but they were able to give her IV meds to stop her from going into “status.” So, as you can see, Tiara not taking her medicine is not an option.
Through the years, as with everything with Tiara, sometimes she just takes them great, no problem, but other times it is a fight to the finish. We are currently in the fighting stage and have been for over a week. This morning as I came up with the plate of medicine, she immediately went into “strike” pose.
As you can see from the picture, she drops to her back and starts kicking as you approach. Today she wedged herself between the couch and a chair so I was having a hard time coming in from the side, which is my usual approach. Just as she was throwing her head side to side yelling, “No, Mom,” I attempted to bring the spoon down towards her mouth and she hit the spoon with her arm and the spoonful of medicine landed in her eye. Ouch. As she was screaming, I immediately tried to get her on her feet so I could wash her eye out at the sink. Because she doesn’t understand, she kept kicking and rubbing her eye at the same time, pushing all the little caplets further into her eyeball. I kept trying to help her but she kept fighting me and making it worse. I then attempted to wipe her eye with a wet towel but that wasn’t doing the job. Finally after a few minutes she relented and went to the sink. Poor baby, I felt so bad for her. We rinsed it out and then she started crying “sorry, sorry.” She always does this when she gets hurt . It makes me feel like an abuser, even though it was an accident and she was the actual abuser, but I always feel terrible. I know she is just trying to protect herself from the horrifying medicine. I mean I can’t even comprehend how gross it must taste. Once, my mom accidentally got a small taste while wiping off the counter, not sure how this exactly happened, but it did, and she nearly died from the taste.
Through the years Lou and I have come up with different approaches. We have tried mixing it with applesauce, chocolate ice cream, pudding, but it seems as if Vanilla soy is her favorite. We have tried bribing her with candy, chips, anything that would work. We have threatened to take stuff away. We have over praised her, telling her how amazing and beautiful she is, and what a great listener she is. This is the most effective approach and most likely will result in success but it is sometime hard to carry out. Like today for instance it is hard to praise someone who is kicking and scratching you. We try to explain that if she doesn’t take her medicine she will have to go to the hospital. I once worked with her for months trying to teach her to swallow pills but it was too difficult. She has this habit of storing food in her mouth like a chipmunk and then spits it out when you aren’t looking. We can’t take the chance she would spit out her meds. I have talked to lots of different people and this is basically the only method of approach, such a bummer for Tiara.
So next time you or your kids have to take a 10 day course of antibiotics and feel like complaining and being haters, think of Tiara and her 18 daily pills.
Have a wonderful Wednesday……
if it makes you feel any better . . . Allie goes into “strike-pose” when I try to give her the yummy tasting, berry flavored, liguid motrin!
oops, liquid!
I have seen the strike pose and I can’t imagine doing it every day (2x). Johnny had pneumonia in the fall and I was screaming at him, “Don’t you dare throw up!” while he was gagging on it, just before he barfed all over the floor. I made him cry and felt so badly!