She puts the pill in her mouth while someone is watching. She keeps it there. And when nobody’s looking, she spits it out.
Careblazer, if your loved one with dementia has been pretending to take their medication, I want to share a very creative, simple idea that can work. And it didn’t come from me. It came from a Careblazer.
When Someone With Dementia Pretends to Take Their Medication
Inside my program we have weekly live Q&As, where Careblazers turn on their cameras, see each other’s faces and share a challenge they’re going through.
In one of them, a Careblazer shared that her loved one, who lives in a care facility, was doing exactly this. She’d put the medicine in her mouth because staff was watching, keep it there, and spit it out when they weren’t looking.
It turned out several other people in the group had seen the same thing with their loved one.
One Careblazer said she didn’t realize her mom was doing it until her mom’s blood pressure went very, very high. That set off alarm bells. And it was confusing, because her mom was on blood pressure medicine.
Eventually they discovered her mom wasn’t taking the medicine at all. She was hiding it in her cheek and spitting it out when nobody was looking.
The Usual Options: Patches, Liquids and Food
Some of the suggestions in the group were the ones you might expect.
- See if the medicine comes in a patch. For that Careblazer’s mom, a patch was something she was open to.
- See if it can be turned into a liquid.
- Put the medicine in food like applesauce or yogurt, so your loved one takes it without even realizing.
All of these are possible solutions you can explore. Each one is a discussion to have with your loved one’s doctor. I go through more reasons people with dementia refuse medication, and other things to try, in my guide to dementia medication refusal.
But one Careblazer shared a different idea, and I love it.
The Simple Trick: Start a Conversation After the Medicine
When she dealt with this with her mom, she asked the staff who give out the medicine not to call attention to it at all.
Here’s what she asked them to do. After giving her mom the medicine, just have a conversation with her.
- Ask about her day and what her plans are.
- Ask how her family is doing, how the grandchildren are.
- Share something about your own day.
A pleasant little conversation that has nothing to do with the medicine. And have some water there, or one of her favorite drinks.
Naturally, her mom just swallowed the medicine during the conversation. Or the medicine dissolved in her mouth, left a little taste, and she wanted a drink. Either way, nobody had to call attention to the thing they were trying to get her to do.
Why It Works: Don’t Call Attention to It
Sometimes we get into trying to reason with them, rationalize with them. Or we say things like, “Open your mouth, let me see what’s inside.”
That can take away their dignity or their independence. And sometimes it makes them push back even more.
That’s why this approach is so beautiful. It gets the medicine taken in a dignified way, without pointing out that the person with dementia is doing something we don’t want them to do.
Try It With Other Dementia Behaviors Too
I think this is a brilliant strategy that we could apply to a lot of different behavior situations in caregiving.
Sometimes we want to address what we’re facing head on. When really, a more roundabout, creative, less attention-drawing approach can accomplish the same thing.
If your loved one very clearly doesn’t want to do something and telling them directly isn’t working, I share more ways to approach it in when someone with dementia refuses to do something.
Ideas Like This Come From Careblazers
Careblazers are the most wonderful source of creative ideas and solutions. That’s the beauty of coming together in a group with people who have open hearts and open minds, all there to help one another out.
That’s what happens inside the Care Collective every week. In our live Q&As and support rooms, someone brings the challenge they’re facing, and other Careblazers share what worked for them. I’d love to see your face and learn more about your situation. You can learn more here.
