A Spoon Full of Sugar

Maybe you've seen the movie where Mary Poppins sings about a spoon full of sugar helping the medicine go down.  If only it were that easy.  It is never easy to get a reluctant patient to take medicine be they children or older folks or the family pet.

One of our first clues that Mother was suffering from dementia was her refusal to take any kind of medicine.  For most of her life she has only taken the occasional aspirin and her vitamins and calcium.  As the Alzheimer's set in, and she had to begin taking more medicine, getting  her to take her daily meds became a struggle.  If she were handed the pills, she either tucked them in her cheek, spit them out, hid them or threw them.  Many a time I would find little stashes of pills around her kitchen.

At the same time, she sometimes took her pills too close together.  She would remember to take her pills, and then a few minutes later she would get up to go take them again.  Since someone wasn't with her all of the time, this became a major concern.  Our initial solution was to get her an automatic pill dispenser.  This machine was on a timer and would beep when it was time for her medication, and the little slot would open and there the pills would be.  This worked for a short time, but soon we still had the same problem.  She would take the pills out of the machine, but she would stash them around her kitchen.  The problem then was she would see them at a later time and take them, but it might be right before or after the next dose.

The problem worsened, and it was one of several issues that led the doctor to tell us it was time to place her in nursing facility.  Once there, of course, her meds were monitored by the nursing staff.  However, the problem continued. The pills would be in the cheek, stashed around her room, spit on the floor or hurled at the staff.  We tried putting them in pudding, jelly, jello, etc. but that spoon full of sugar didn't work.  Now her medication is powdered and placed in a paste, which she takes from a wooden spoon like we used to use when we ate ice cream from the little cups.  From the look on her face, it is not like ice cream or a spoon full of sugar.  It reminds me of pinching a cat's cheeks to get it to take a pill.  She takes it but licks at the roof of her mouth.  At least we know she is getting her meds appropriately, but I wish Mary Poppins could sing Mother into a happier way to get the medicine to go down.