..makes the medicine go down. Apparently.
Except in my mother's case, who's convinced she possesses an abnormally small throat and will therefore choke to death if she tries to take a pill, sugar or not (she lets aspirin dissolve in her mouth, for instance). Despite there being no medical evidence to support her Teeny Gullet Theory, Peg remains convinced, obsessed would be a better word, the result being that whenever she has to take a pill, which is every day, she covers the butcherblock in what looks like some chemisty experiment at a food-tasting factory, a little of this--cottage cheese and peaches, peanut butter, a bite of roast chicken stuffing--a little of that--taramasalata on a cracker, salted cashews, a glass of milk--anything to help make the pills slide down more easily.
The pills themselves she then tips out of the green plastic day-to-day medication sorter in which Bonnie places them diligently every week. Peg then inspects each one, frowning occasionally, before decanting the entire pill pile into another little butter-pat-size dish, after which she counts them about fifteen million times before finally ending up with three piles, two in butter pat dishes and one straight on the countertop, a pile which tends to disperse almost immediately when she reaches across the butcherblock and her sleeve swipes come of the pills into the sink, an event which, when pointed out, necessitates some fast replacements being flown in from the desk in the (former) dining room. This is followed by yet another recount and more frowning, with much close scrutiny now of the pill bottles themselves as she attempts to match each pill with the right bottle, and invariably finds herself either one pill short or having one extra and holding up one she claims never to have seen before but which she has been taking for five years. This is where, if you're still watching all this palaver without having yet slit your wrists and been returned to England in a body bag, you say "For God's sakes, Mother, just take the bloody things! You act like we're all trying to slip you cyanide or something!"
Finally, once all the pills have been yet again re-sorted and re-counted and retrieved from the floor, the Pill Taking Procedure itself can start. Each pill has a particular food item that "goes with it", something I have no idea how you determine, being more of a chuck it down with water type of girl myself rather than instinctively knowing that applesauce, say, is a lovely accompaniment to Allopurinol.
About a year later, during which time you can go wash and dry your hair and answer emails about Boundary Disputes and Norwegian Pension claims or anything that takes your fancy---Peg will have managed to actually get down perhaps three out of her fourteen pills, gagged on a few others, spat some out, knocked over a glass of milk into the two little butter pat dishes full of pills, and used up a roll of paper towels and a box of Kleenex.
The morning gone, it will then be time for her nap.
She will wake up a few hours later not knowing what time it is, what day it is, or if it's morning or night, but one hundred percent sure she has taken her pills, all of them, that day and every day, and launches waspishly into anyone who dares suggest otherwise.
Bonnie worries. She has just written to ask if I can please please think of any way to get all Peg's pills down her, she and Terri have tried everything short of tying my mother to the kitchen chair, tipping her head back, and shovelling.
My feeling about all this? Not sure. Easy to say, at a distance but well--if she takes them, she takes them. If not, well. So be it. The gout will start acting up and her bladder spasms will surely return, among other things. Does one wait until that happens, then just hope she'll learn? And start making a concerted effort? At 97? Don't think so. Have suggested Terri takes the two really important ones, crushes them, and hides them in Peg's dinner. Peg says she can't taste anything anyway. Might work.
But then again, the big question--how well does meatloaf really go with Oxybutynin?? There's fuck all in The Joy of Cooking about this.
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