Time to Pill the Child!

Pilling cats, as some of you know, is fraught with danger. As a result, some smart puncture-wound averse individual invented something called a pill popper. It is a long slender tube, with a slotted open-ended rubber portion at one end and a plunger at the other. One inserts the pill into the rubber portion, somehow manages to pry open the angry cat's mouth, inserts the tube as far into the mouth as possible, pushes the plunger, holds the mouth shut and then runs like heck.

This worked not at all on my late cat Nikki, who gave me 5 puncture wounds in 2 days and then required 2 vet techs and a vet to "show me how to give him pills", at which point they conceded defeat and gave me the number of a pharmacy who would compound his medicine into a chicken-flavored liquid. Most of which would end up on his fur, but then at least he licked it off, so ingested most of it anyway.

The point, right. One of my colleagues at work, in response to my bemoaning the lack of good data on effective treatment of asthma in children, reminded me that Omega-3 fatty acids are proven an effective adjunct for treatment of asthma. Hey, I have those at home! They are good for you, no side effects, might as well try them. Only complication is that they are large. Real horse pills.

We tried to get Naomi to swallow one this evening. The water went down just fine, the pill, not so much. Chewing was out - the gel capsule was too tough. I looked for smaller ones at the store - no luck. So, I remembered my pill popper, unused these 8 years or more. I found it promptly (I'm good like that) and took it and a pill upstairs.

"Open up Naomi! No, keep your tongue out of the way." [POP] [Gag, swallow, gag]

Success!

I asked her later if she'd prefer to try swallowing her pill tomorrow. "No mommy, I liked it the other way better." Ooooookay.