Monday, October 19, 2009

Quick! Hide the Drugs!!

A parent of an epileptic child has to be great at disguising meds to get their kiddos to take them everyday!. It's unbearable to fight day after day to get your little one to take their meds. Unfortunately, Keto Kids can't have the sugary yummy kind of meds that children on a normal diet consume. Keto Kids' meds tend to be bland, powdery and some are a bit smelly.

Hiding meds can be tricky! At eight months of age, Noah began on Phenobarbitol. At one year of age he had been switched to Depakote. Six months later, Noah began 18 months of Keppra eventually transitioning to Topomax. At one point, Noah was on an all-in-one supplement powder (Nano VM)that had to be mixed in water. It had a gritty texture and the flavor wasn't any better. He currently takes many many supplements, which have been challenging in their own way (Polycitra, 500mg Calcium tablet, KPhos Neutral tablet, LevoCarnitine, Bugs Bunny Sugar Free Vitamin and one brazil nut each day - a total of 11 pills per day + the liquid polycitra).

Here are a few ways that we have hidden meds over the years in order to get Noah to take them everyday...........
  1. Open Depakote Capsules - Sprinkles in mouth - Juice (keto friendly) chaser to wash it down!
  2. Before the diet - Depakote sprinkles in applesauce.
  3. Tablets crushed - hidden in applesauce, ice cream, yogurt (keto friendly and also before keto)
  4. Nano VM - undisguisable!! We ended up just pouring the powder in his mouth and chasing it with juice! Dropped it later because it didn't work for him.
  5. Keto friendly - Crushed tablets mixed in with oatmeal.
  6. Infant - liquid dispenser forced into the very back of their mouths. Followed with milk sippy cup
  7. Keto friendly - Peanut Butter/butter mixed with crushed tablets
  8. Before diet - Crushed Fruit Loops/Trix/Fruity Pebbles mixed with crushed tablets and eaten with a spoon in dry form.
  9. Keto friendly - crushed tablets mixed with smashed strawberries on top of Keto Cheesecake
  10. Keto friendly - Scrambled eggs with butter and smashed small bits of tomato (like salsa). We crush the tablets, scatter them lightly on top of the eggs but under the butter and tomato.
Hopefully some of these ideas can help you in disguising the meds for your kiddos! It's tricky! It's not fun to fight this battle either! But, again, it's one of the many battles we choose to fight to help out our Keto Kids!

Some good news...........Once Noah hit 5 years old, he began taking all of his meds like an adult! No more hidding the meds.

He pops pills better than I do now! Yikes!
Have a sunny day!
I love my Keto Kid!

4 comments:

Fawn said...

Great ideas, Cathy!

We also had a multivitamin powder that tasted horrible and even made cream taste sour. The Bugs Bunny works much better, even if Jade is not always enthusiastic about it.

Our dietician gave us the okay to give Jade an extra few grams of whipped cream to hide her Depakote, Keppra, and crushed clonazepam, which worked much better than our previous method of crushing, tipping into a syringe, then sucking up some keto-Koolaid. The Keppra never wanted to dissolve! Thank goodness she pops pills now, too!

B said...

Yeah, Nano VM didn't work for us either.

Luke is wonderful with the depakote sprinkles but its the other 6 vitamins that just about drive me crazy (selenium, potassium citrate, hydroclorot, multivitamin, calcium, carnitor). We need two people to squirt those down and then chase it with 'special pop.'

Cathy said...

Hey Tam - It is soooo exhausting getting these pills down the kiddos sometimes. I lucked out and saw a post on the Yahoo Keto group one time that suggested 1 Brazil per day to replace Noah's selenium pill. The dietitian said - "absolutely - no problem!" Noah loves it because it's one less pill & I love it because it's a natural source of selenium!! Just a thought....

kara Shell said...

We put Katie's Depakote sprinkles in a teaspoon of Walden Farms Sugar Free Calorie Free Chocolate Syrup. We've done this from the very start of the diet and it's never been a problem. We don't calculate it, it's free.

 

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