The Sore Throat

[billroper]

Katie told me last night that her throat hurt. By the middle of the night, she came into our room in a good bit of pain.

The problem is that she hates the taste of the chewable and liquid children's ibuprofen and/or acetaminophen and she can't manage to swallow a single adult pill. And that's what she needs to take the pain down.

I admit that the grape chewable ibuprofen smelled pretty vile to me. Over lunch, I found some orange flavored children's ibuprofen. daisy_knotwise managed to get two down her this afternoon by dissolving them in water. This evening, I got her to chew up two of them and wash them down with iced tea.

This little girl has a hypertrophied sense of "That tastes yucky!"

*sigh*

We kept her home from school today. We'll see how she feels tomorrow.

Comments

[little-cinnamon.livejournal.com]

Much sympathy - we've spent the last few days trying to get vile-tasting antibiotics down a squirmy protesting toddler. Nobody's idea of fun. I hope she feels better quickly!

[billroper]

Oh, my. And given that you're up at this hour, I'm guessing that process could be going better.

Good luck!

[archangelbeth]

I've got one of those as well, and glad I am that she's grown enough to take pills instead of us trying to find something least-yucky. (She did tolerate the orange stuff best, at least. One gulp of that, then a lot of water...)

I hope it's not strep! If you get vomiting, it may be...

ibuprofen?

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Granted it didn't exist when I was a kid, but I never got given asprin for a sore throat either. Any hard candy will help ease the pain, but mother favored gargling with salt water (whcih she always made way too strong; go for isotonic or barely more)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

My mom used the back of a spoon to pulverize aspirin into a spoonful of jam or honey. The result was a little gritty but easy to eat and tasted fine. Might be worth trying with the acetaminophen.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

we've spent the last few days trying to get vile-tasting antibiotics down a squirmy protesting toddler.

For future reference - most pharmacies can flavor (or over-flavor) liquid medicines a different flavor than what they already are. Keeping them in the fridge can also help. Same applies to OTC stuff although they will charge you $ for the service.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

And honey is known to soothe sore throats and ease coughs.

[sexybass.livejournal.com]

Remember my mother pulverizing pills for me as wells and mixing with something. We didn't have flavoured meds back then :-/

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Oh I feel her pain. I never did learn how to swallow pills. Unsolicited taste advice follows!

Ibuprofen IS gross! It's kind of spicy, which works poorly with fruit flavours, and yet every single brand makes it fruity. The advil brand fruit (not grape or blue raspberry, just generic "fruit" flavour) chewable tablet is the least nasty one that I've tried. The spicy taste is disguised well with fizzy drinks - a bit of cola after chewing the tablets is particularly good at making the aftertaste go away.

Acetaminophen at least is just bitter, which goes okay with the fruity chewables. Tylenol brand grape tastes the best to me, although a lot of kids like the bubble gum ones. This is one case where I pay up for the brand name, because Tylenol really does a better job of making them taste less bitter than all the store brands I've tried. The chewables taste vastly better than the liquid for acetaminophen.

One option in both cases is to use the infant drops rather than the children's liquid. The infant drops are twice as concentrated, since instead of trying to taste good, they try to make it be the smallest amount of liquid possible so you can squirt it at the back of a baby's throat, babies being notoriously resistant to following verbal directions. Anyway, it's still gross, but you only need to get half as much down, which can be easier for kids who realllly don't like the taste.

Crushing a grown-up pill in soft food is an option too. The fattier and sweeter, the better it will be at covering up the taste. Watery food like applesauce or yogurt - in which the bitter drugs are very soluble - unfortunately can magnify the bitter taste. Chocolate pudding cups are what I use for myself! Resist the urge to use peanut butter - it covers up the bitterness at first, but then it's stuck to the roof of your mouth and you taste every last bit, yuck. When crushing a pill to mix in food, go for a fairly coarse end result, about like brown sugar - don't try to get it fine like icing sugar. The surface area of the crushed powder determines how much you'll taste it, so a fine powder will taste much worse than bigger chunks. Try to mix the crushed pill in to one or two little spoonfuls of the food, and have some untainted food to have right after to help wash the taste away. I take a whole pudding cup, mix the meds with the top half inch of pudding, gag that down, and then eat the rest of the pudding cup, which actually tastes GOOD, right away.

Choice is a powerful tool with kids. Do you want the chewable, the liquid, or the grownup pill in pudding? Feeling like you have some control over it makes it easier to psych yourself up to get the gross stuff down. Assuming this is before the overtired, in pain, tantrum time of day when no choice is acceptable. :)

Good luck and I hope miss Katie is feeling better soon.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It's actually safer too. When my baby brother wanted a treat, he got into the honey and not any flavored children's drug. Mom had to wash him clothes and all but she did not have to have his stomach pumped.

[little-cinnamon.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I might try that next time, though I don't know if they do that as a matter of course on this side of the pond! He does have a preference for strawberry stuff, though I find that penicillin is a strong enough yucky taste that it cuts through everything! :)

[little-cinnamon.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Yeah, it's been a catalogue of woes for the last week, but (fingers crossed) we think he may finally be on the mend. Here's to healthy small people all round! :)

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

Back in my 1950's childhood, there was ONLY orange-flavored chewable 'baby aspirin'. Before I got big enough to swallow the pills, mom would crush one [between two spoons] then add enough orange juice to make a sort of slurry that I could swallow, followed by a chaser of straight orange juice.