I remember a time when I had to give Calvin medicine twenty-two times every day. Some of his meds he took only once daily, others twice, some were administered three times a day and another I gave him four times each day. Nutty.
Clear pink and milky white liquid medicines were—and still are—shaken, syringed up, given straight or diluted in water in his baby bottle. Capsules needed to be opened and their white powdery contents sprinkled into Calvin’s yogurt. For a while I had to give him just half of a capsule, which entailed pouring some of the chemical from one tiny half of the open gelatin capsule into the other and eyeball it through the translucent gel until both halves appeared to hold equal amounts. Sometimes the contents would dump out all at once like ice cubes do when slurping the last few drops of beverage out of a cup. Crazy.
Pills are always easier to handle than capsules, though not when I’ve had to cut them into quarters, or even eighths, and you can forget about being precise when the damn things are oval. I’ve made a handy stencil on the back of an old, flaky mirror and cut the pills on the glass using a razor blade. Dubious.
At some point, after his epilepsy diagnosis and after initiating the Ketogenic diet, Calvin was taking upwards of eight medicines all with different dosing protocol. I had to devise a check-off chart so I could account for each drug that I had administered lest I forget which ones he had gotten and which ones he hadn’t. The consequences of forgetting a seizure medicine, or double-dosing it, are equally hairy, though thankfully that hasn't happened since a neurologist double-dosed Calvin's first antiepileptic drug while in the hospital; we caught the mistake after the first dose but he never owned up to it. Wacko.
Now, if we could just discover a cure we could all do away with the nutty, crazy, wacko, dubious world of chemical drugs and their side effects, not to mention the frigging (F-bombing) seizures.
Please donate to epilepsy research this month and help bring us one step closer to a cure at:
http://www.calvinscure.com
Clear pink and milky white liquid medicines were—and still are—shaken, syringed up, given straight or diluted in water in his baby bottle. Capsules needed to be opened and their white powdery contents sprinkled into Calvin’s yogurt. For a while I had to give him just half of a capsule, which entailed pouring some of the chemical from one tiny half of the open gelatin capsule into the other and eyeball it through the translucent gel until both halves appeared to hold equal amounts. Sometimes the contents would dump out all at once like ice cubes do when slurping the last few drops of beverage out of a cup. Crazy.
Pills are always easier to handle than capsules, though not when I’ve had to cut them into quarters, or even eighths, and you can forget about being precise when the damn things are oval. I’ve made a handy stencil on the back of an old, flaky mirror and cut the pills on the glass using a razor blade. Dubious.
At some point, after his epilepsy diagnosis and after initiating the Ketogenic diet, Calvin was taking upwards of eight medicines all with different dosing protocol. I had to devise a check-off chart so I could account for each drug that I had administered lest I forget which ones he had gotten and which ones he hadn’t. The consequences of forgetting a seizure medicine, or double-dosing it, are equally hairy, though thankfully that hasn't happened since a neurologist double-dosed Calvin's first antiepileptic drug while in the hospital; we caught the mistake after the first dose but he never owned up to it. Wacko.
Now, if we could just discover a cure we could all do away with the nutty, crazy, wacko, dubious world of chemical drugs and their side effects, not to mention the frigging (F-bombing) seizures.
Please donate to epilepsy research this month and help bring us one step closer to a cure at:
http://www.calvinscure.com
No comments:
Post a Comment