A propros almost nothing, as a young copy editor I was responsible for a nursing journal. Among other things, I learned two words: analgesic and diuretic. I say I learned the words, but I didn’t always remember which was which. Here, as in most things, context was everything.
Anyway, because of my solid medical background, as outlined above, I can safely say that Jordan is now on a series of fairly strong analgesics. The diuretics she most certainly does not need.
Jordan takes one of her pain pills before bed every night to help her be comfortable enough to sleep. That’s the idea. I’m pretty sure she can sleep through anything, but the pill is just an added bonus for her. I’m confident her dreams are now far more interesting than mine.
Recently, though, Jordan’s consumption of her nightly happy pill has become problematic.
The first sign of something amiss was a small white pill on the kitchen floor. This is Jordan’s pill. I wrap it in a little section of pill pocket to trick her. After a few months of taking the pill without incident, it now seems that she’s rebelling. I wrap it again, feed it to her again, and this time I watch. And, sure enough, she spits out the pill and eats the yummy pocket.
I will not be outsmarted. So I wrap up the by-now-pretty-gunky pill in a whole pill pocket. I feed it to her. For those counting, this is now treat #3 for one pill…See how I’m outsmarting her?
Again, she spits out the pill. This time, she carefully eats the pocket off around it. The pill is now a creamy little mess in the middle of the floor. So unappetizing that even John Henry won’t go near it. And he eats anything if it drops in the kitchen.
Final time…I wrap the squishy mess in a pill pocket and squirt a little squirty-cheese (“contains real cheese”) on top. This might seem irresponsible, but it is a vet-certified procedure. And, of course, this time it works. Jordan swallows the whole thing down and, no doubt, looks forward to a wild night of psychedelic dreams of rainbow squirrels and easily caught tiny humans on skateboards made of squirty cheese.
And once more I marvel at how easily trained I am…and what a genius Miss Jordan turned out to be.
Small Change on Strangers 