I’m the first one to admit that my kitchen counter looks more like a pharmacy than the bricks and mortar location we normally go to. I’m also quick to offer gratitude to the deities who oversee such things that my children are – knock wood – mostly healthy these days and don’t get colds or other infections as often as they used to. But when they do, it’s time to bring out the big guns, and I guess our pharmacist was taking into consideration my daughter’s diabetes when she filled a scrip yesterday for Amoxil and sold it to me in capsule form. No sickly-sweet suspension mix = no unnecessary blood glucose spikes. I appreciated the gesture. When you’ve got a family with as many complex medical issues as mine does, it’s really nice to be “understood” by your service providers.
This is not my kitchen counter. It just feels like it, sometimes. (Image Source: Google.com)
What neither the pharmacist nor I was counting on, is that my girl-child can’t swallow anything she can’t chew. As in, can’t, not won’t. Her brothers have oral sensory issues, but when DS15 gets a migraine he knows the quickest way out of it is to chug back two Advil with some water and get ’er done. As for her twin baby brother, we simply hide them in his food and he’s generally none the wiser. But not my girl. When we mixed the capsule with applesauce, she separated the capsule from the food with her tongue and started to choke. We tried everything short of grabbing one of the pill plungers we use for the cats and just popping it back. But, my lovely daughter also has a wicked gag reflex, which, among other things, has made it nigh-impossible for her dentist to get proper x-rays of her teeth and jaw (apparently he doesn’t have a panorex machine in his office – go figure).
When I was a kid, when I got sick enough that our family’s venerable pediatrician felt it necessary to prescribe medication, I had two choices: nasty, nasty, bile-inducing trisulfaminic in liquid form; or tablets. I was happier than a pig in mud when the K-Mart pharmacy switched me over to the “‘cillins.” And I had absolutely no idea that these things are available in chewable form. (Mind you, I had no idea until my daughter told me yesterday that she can’t swallow what she doesn’t chew first. Universe, we have some work to do.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, I was able to get in touch with the pharmacist and swap the capsules for liquid suspension, which smells like banana steeped in liquid sugar. And sweet baby Jesus, she likes it! She is perfectly happy to take the syringe from my hand and dose herself. Would that she had a similarly obliging attitude towards drawing and injecting her own insulin. Baby steps, Mama, baby steps. The blood sugar spikes haven’t been horrid. Bronchitis – be gone!
It is times like this, though, when I wonder how much more about each of my kids, my daughter especially, is yet unknown; and what has yet to reveal itself to us all.
