Gut Drugs.

Ellie is on a string of drugs every day to help her deal with her limited plumbing. Off and on, she has been on these and some others forever.

Reglan (Metoclopramide if you are our generic friendly insurance company) is a drug that helps Ellie move things down the pipe and through. Her motility has been pretty bad in the past and Reglan may help to boost this. This is one of the standard list of short gut drugs that seemingly every short gut kid is on. Some parents question whether this is necessary but it seems to do some good for Ellie. She gets this four times a day, either by mouth during the day (‘p.o.’ as the docs say) or through her G-tube when she is sleeping.

Actigal (Ursodiol) This is bile salt that is found in bears. No kidding. But, instead of finding Yogi and milking his gall bladder, they synthesize it.Bile salts help you digest fats in your intestine. Since Ellie doesn’t have full function in her intestines we give her this to give her digestion a boost. It also has good effects for her liver. Another of the cocktail of short gut drugs that every kid gets. She gets this twice a day either by mouth or by G-tube.

Iron- For some reason Ellie is anemic. To boost her iron levels she gets an iron supplement twice a day. We have just started this and will keep her on it until the measure of her iron ‘hematocrit’ comes back up to normal levels. She gets this twice a day p.o or in the g tube.

All of that brings the grand total to 8 times a day that we have to draw up the drugs in the tiny little syringe and pump in into her. 8 times that we have to remember to do this. Checklists and alarm clocks help, but we miss them every now and then. We are getting better. Hopefully they will help help get better at digesting and absorbing.