Hi. I'm on 7-10 meds, all crushable. A few are coated, and in the past when I crushed them, pieces of the coating did not crush completely but I was still able to take them. My pills are 1/2 psychiatric and 1/2 sleep aids. I need them and doubt the RNY will make me not need them.

Question: We DO have to crush our pills, right? For how long?

Big question: What is the most humane way to take crushed medication when we can only drink ounce(s) at a time? I'd be making a paste!

I know how horrific crushed pills taste, I need a lot of ideas on how to make them taste better. Humane ways, .

My surgeons head RN came to visit me in the hospital and told me to do it that way. Of course you can't eat a whole cup but a little to get the meds down. I would give your DR a call and see if you can do it that way. Good luck and it will get better.

Now that I'm on the pureed/strained stage, I use yogurt, as some of you suggested. It is Sooo much better that way! Thanks!!!

Smaller pills I swallow. Larger ones I crush and mix with plain yogurt.

It seems to be working.

I give my patients crushed mess in a little chocolate pudding-- I do applesauce for them too, but have been told chocolate pudding hides the taste better--

(RN for 5 years)

Can you crush and put it in some yogurt? Anything to not have to taste the drug. I never had to crush any pills. Of course my thyroid med is a liquid pill like Vitamin e.

That was exactly how I took mine for the first little while: bashed the living you-know-what out of them with a large spoon (which was actually quite therapeutic at times), then mixed it with yoghurt to mask the nasty flavour. My surgeon said I had to crush them for the first week. In fact, I still take my heart pills with yoghurt because I'm one of those weird people who finds the tinier the pill, the more likely it is to get stuck in my throat. And damn, those things taste nasty if they get stuck! With the limited capacity of the pouch, I can't always down a big glass of Water to move a stuck pill any more, but they always go down first time with a teaspoon of yoghurt.

My doctor never required crushed pills, even for the one huge pill I had to take. His advice was to take them slowly, waiting several minutes between each pill.

I take so many pills it ruins the yogurt, I can't swallow right when I use yogurt. I'm weird. Now, I've been crushing them, putting them into two 1 ounce cups with Tim Hortons Hot decaf, strawberry flavored tea, stirring and swallowing. Then take some more sips of the tea. The heat in the tea seems to dissolve the pills better, no "crumbs". I just hate the crushing of all my pills, my fingers are going to get calloused by turning that darn crusher so hard. Even splitting the one pill is getting hard to do by hand. I hate the whole process.

My doctor said it was unnecessary to crush pills, just take with plenty of water and wait several minutes between pills.