Last night Sidney woke me up around 1:30am. I could tell he wasn't feeling well. Recently when he is gonna regurgitate he makes these weird swallowing sounds. Kind of like gulps. Then he sits up as straight as he can and looks kind of sad. I have no idea why this happens sometimes, it just does and it breaks my heart. So he regurgitated his dinner meal on the carpet and I cleaned it all up. I decided to try using Sucralfate to try and soothe his esophagus. In the beginning, we used to administer this every day. Now we just turn to it when it seems he is sick and his esophagus may be irritated. Plus, he absolutely HATES it. Even though he hasn't had it in a while, he remembers the little medicine squirter and runs at the sight of it.Anyways, the Sucralfate essentially is used to act as a coating or "Band-Aid" for his esophagus to help soothe it when it is irritated. I know it must be administered an hour before or two hours after any other medication or food as it can bind with other medications preventing them from working properly or bind with food potentially causing a blockage. What we do is dilute 1/2 a pill in 6ml of water. We have a medicine squirter (not sure the technical term) and once it is dissolved we shake it vigorously. We then give it to Sidney in small squirts until it is all gone. Most people say that they need to be horizontal for this, which seems to defy most of the advice to avoid Aspiration Pneumonia. So after I give it to Sid, I hold him vertical for about a minute to be safe.
It seemed to work for him last night. I laid on the couch with him the rest of the night and he seemed good. But at lunch after he ate he made those sounds again while in his Bailey Chair, so I am going to give him some more Sucralfate when I get home from work and see if that helps the little guy.
