Anna has had a lot of medical issue throughout her life. She takes a thyroid pill every morning. I take 1 ml of water and crush the pill and she sucks it out of the syringe, something that we have been doing for years. However, as of late, we had been working with her gut issues. She had been having blood and mucus in her stools. They did a whole work-up and couldn’t find anything and so they tried various, different medications. Some of these medications needed to be compounded at the children’s hospital pharmacy and sent to us. I would try mixing it in ice cream or other food items. It was getting so difficult as she did not like how it tasted. She would be so sad when it was time for medicines-twice a day. Then, trying to get her to take it and send her off to school, was getting difficult. Then, there were adult antibiotics that could not be formulated any other way, so we crushed it which also had a taste difficult to hide. Finally, my mom had an idea. It was time to teach her to swallow a pill. My son encouraged me-he said, “Mom, I see whole blueberries coming out in her poops, she swallows those whole, so I’m sure she can learn to swallow a pill.” That gave the courage to try. I explained to Anna that we will need to try to swallow it so she wouldn’t have to taste it. Every day, I put her on my lap, grabbed some water, I threw the pill to the back of her tongue and had her drink water. It worked. She didn’t like it so much at first, of course, but, I saw this is our only way, and very soon, she felt confident that she could do it. She was so proud of herself. Then, one morning, she says to me, “Mama, I will now do a magic trick.” She popped the pill to the back of her tongue and it was gone! 6 years old and she can swallow pills now! It has made everything so much better and easier for all of us including and most importantly, for Anna!
~Raquel
