Has anyone been able to just take their meds with water - without crushing or cutting - after surgery?

Has anyone been able to just take their meds with Water - without crushing or cutting - after surgery?

I was able to take any pill I needed to until after my third fill (if I recall correctly). It's really a personalized thing; you may never have a problem, or you may have trouble right from the start. It varies depending on the restriction level you have, as well as your native ability to swallow pills in general.

As a rule, if a pill is larger than a pencil eraser, you should break it in two. That's roughly the size of the stoma (after a fill or two) and pills smaller than that will proceed easily down into the larger stomach. Pills smaller than that will just stay in the pouch, will take longer to dissolve, and that can compromise their effectiveness as well as being potentially irritating to the stomach.

:omg: Wow your are awesome to be able to chew them - Yuck!!! One of my hypertension pills is time release - a large capsule - I guess I will have to check with my doc on that one. Thank you for your reply!

I take a med that is in a large capsule and is timed release. I spoke to my doctor and pharmacist and then called the maker of the drug. Inside are tiny beads so she suggested that I open them up and put the beads on a spoon and then chase them down with water.

I can take all of mine and one is large. Have not had any problems and am pretty restricted at this time.

Hello. I take meds. Well, just the Nexium capsules my doctor puts us on after surgery, and small pain pills when needed, and capsule Paxil. They told me that you can take pills no bigger then the Tylenol pills, and capsules are better because they disolved opposed to the others that sit on your stomach. The only pill I took that wasnt a capsule was in the hospital for pain and it was really tiny. Hope this helps.

:omg: Thanks to all who replied.:girl_hug:

I pretty much just take mine unless they are huge, then I cut them with a pill cutter and take them in pieces.

Well I am not there yet but this is what they told me. Anything large crush or cut into smaller pieces. Anything small should be fine. Anything that you can get in a liquid or a chewable form, and you'd be surprised if you asked your pharmacist what's available in liquid or chewable forms, should be done. I personally take glucophage and it's a big old horse pill, times 4 per day..... so I am gonna have to do something with that for sure.

You have to remember not all pills can be crushed or broken up because of the timing of their release into your system. You really should check with your pharmacist prior to taking them after banding. I know my pharmacist was a big help. Iron pills for one shouldn't be broken up as well as some other meds. I highly recommend checking with them Good luck.

Yep me too (recommend talking to pharmacist). I take glucophage extended release and I think I will have to go off of that and onto the regular in order to break them up. One other extended release I am on too that I will have to go off of and onto regular for the time that I will need to cut them up.

I take an 800 mg Motrin, my prozac, and a little generic claritin pill every morning. Most of the time, everything goes down fine. I work night shifts, so, most of the time I'm taking my meds at the "end" of my day. For the first month or so after banding (11/06), I was cutting the motrins (they're too nasty to crush!), but I got cocky and stopped cutting them. Just last week, on my day off, I slugged down my pills as usual and ye-ouch! PB'd for an hour, waited another hour and retook the pills I saw in the sink (uh, new pills, not the actual ones from the sink - ick). I've been chopping up the motrins again since then, and the others are still going down fine. I think it was because I'm not as open when I first get up, and the sucker went down sideways that morning.

BTW, I've also gotten up, staggered into the kitchen with dry mouth and slugged down cold Water and choked on that! How can you choke on water? (and I don't mean it went down the wrong way - I PB'd). Guess it was too cold and too big a gulp...