Having Trouble with your Child Taking Medicine?

We all know that when your child is diagnosed with cancer, there are a lot of different medicines they have to take. It’s unreal sometimes how much a small child will have to consume in medicines. We hated seeing our child go through this, but it had to be done.

Now if your child is older you normally wouldn’t have to much of an issue with this. But, if your child is in the younger stages around 2 to 10, then this may help you.

With our son Brandon, at the beginning he was really good about taking his meds. But, as the chemotherapy continued, his taste buds changed as well. It happens with chemo. So, he eventually started to fight us in taking his meds at home. Little did he know that he was making it rough on us too because we had to get the medicines in him or the doctor would be lecturing us on the importance of him taking meds…lol.

I found a few good choices to get the meds in that actually work well. Here is a list of foods that chemo meds work well with. You can even match the meds with the color of drink or food so that your child does not even realize they’re getting it.

Orange juice (the best), orange sherbet, Sunkist soda, orange Jell-o and yogurt. You can mix meds into these items to make smoothies, ice cream or anything to help the taste of their medicines. We crushed up the pills with a pill crusher and would mix it in with some orange juice and let Brandon take it. He drank it right down with no problem. For some reason the taste of anything orange helped with taking medicines. It masks the taste.

Each child has their own taste. You’ll need to work with it. We would let our son mix up his own smoothie or milk shake and then we would add his meds to it. He never knew the difference in drinking it.

All in all, let your child have fun making a treat of some kind. He/she makes the special treat and you add the meds in with them knowing or unknowing. This helps so much to reduce the fights and arguments that can come from taking nasty tasting medicines. I hope this really helps someone out there who is going through this also as we did. Keep trying…it will get better!