Wednesday, August 6, 2008

The trouble with meds

If things continue to go as well as they are with Hollis's seizures, I am really hoping that we can reduce the number of medications she takes within a year's time. Giving her meds is a nightmare for her and for us. We just stayed in the habit of giving her the sprinkle (capsule contents) or tablet form of the medications, because when she was on the ketogenic diet we couldn't use the liquid form: the carbohydrate content is too high in the syrup bases of most drugs. It also proved easier (initially) to give her the meds on a teaspoon of baby food than what I can recall of giving liquid meds like Tylenol, which she just coughed right back at us. Well, now she puts up such a fight for taking this tiny amount of baby food with the meds, that all of us end up sweating, screaming, crying and usually covered in bananas and Depakote and Topamax sprinkles. She even knows the sound of the pill bottles and tries to hide when she knows they are coming. I have yet to figure out a better method of giving the meds, and we have tried a bunch: sticking it in food (she finds a way to avoid that piece of food), putting it in a syringe with water (sticks to side), using something with sticky texture like peanut butter (makes her gag), etc. My creativity has run out.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My name is Maree Sneed and i would like to show you my personal experience with Topamax.

I am 27 years old. Have been on Topamax for 3 months now. Had severe debilitating migraines at least 2x a week. Had to stay in bed. I have a 7 year old. I was missing out on everything. Now I can get out of bed and get on with my day. I am down to maybe 1 migraine a month and it is functional not crippling.

I have experienced some of these side effects -
weight loss, no appetite, severe mood swings, emotional, yucky taste to cola, thirsty, thirsty, thirsty, extreme fatique

I hope this information will be useful to others,
Maree Sneed