Dad Refuses to Take His Blood-Pressure Pills. What's a Son -– and a Doctor -– to Do?

check with the physician before crushing meds. You can not crush time-release meds.

Yes, for medicines that are important, it's a great idea to think "outside the pill", and to consider patches and other medication forms. Thank you, readers, for bringing up these points.

My mother has been very resistant to taking her medications, she has 2 pills in the morning and 4 in the evening. I now get her water and her pills, after breakfast and after dinner and just calmly hand her the pills and say "here is your medicine, Mom." If she questions the medication, I simply tell her we have an appointment with the doctor to have him check her medications to see if she needs to continue taking them. Mother was diagnosed with dementia/alzheimer 20 months ago and has no short-term memory. She has regressed to the 60's and 70's at the present time. Some of her medication is time-released. Cannot crush that medicine. Thank heavens this method is working for me. My mother is 85 and the other care-giver is 90 (stepfather). Obviously, I am in charge of medications and doctor appointments. Good luck and God Bless you all.

I totally agree with the comment about needing something like the patch. My friend has a cat with high blood pressure and she rubs a pharmacist-compounded medication in its ears every day. Something like that would require a daily visit to the dad by someone and the agreement of the patient, but if it's not in pill form, the dad might be more open to trying it because he wouldn't be experienced in resisting that new method.

Alzheimer's patients often have trouble swallowing, as my 88-year-old mother does. I wish pharmaceutical manufacturers would take this into account and create patches similar to the ones that are used to dispense birth control and nicotine addiction meds.

crush the med and add to drink and/or food.