Autistic teenage vegetarian daughter refusing prescription meds.

[taratill]

Posting on AIBU for traffic.

Does anyone have any experience of this and how to work around it?

DD is 16 (so she has to consent to treatment), she is autistic and has very fixed views.

She takes vegetarianism to the extreme generally and this has been an increasing issue over the years with her refusing cross contamination and not wanting to be near where meat is prepared or sweet wrappers even because of gelatine.

She's normally fit and healthy but the last few months she hasn't felt well and has been experiencing headaches and dizziness and palpatations so she's just had bloods done and it turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly that she's anaemic and has low B12 and vit D. The doctor has phoned and has left the prescription at the surgery pharmacy wanting bloods redone in 3 months.

I've called her and she has said she will not take the prescription if it is not specifically vegetarian, the doctor does know she is vegetarian and autistic but I'm not sure if the meds prescribed will be!

She is an intelligent child but her views on this are horrible. She would rather be ill than break her own rules around products being vegetarian.

I just don't know how to sensibly approach this. I guess if the prescription isn't suitable i can make an appointment for her to explain to dr why she is refusing treatment.

Does the Mumsnet hive mind have any other ideas/ experience? She's at 80% attendance at college due to frequently feeling too washed out to attend and she is county level sport and this is impacted her in that too.

There is just no reasoning with her so it's exhausting.

Hi I am going to get her to do this, good idea.

She won't have an infusion as she has a phobia about veins.

Re “prescription strength” - she just needs to take whatever amount of the OTC ones that she’s comfortable are veggie adds up to the prescription. So if she’s prescribed 400mg vit D and the ones she will take are 200mg, she just takes twice as much.

I can recommend getting the advice of a dietician. They can work with the situation you have whilst you are working on changing it. I had a health condition that made me afraid to eat anything due to symptoms. The dietician turned things around for me by identifying things I could eat that would maintain my health, it was almost like she gave me permission to have things that I did not think were ok, but were good for me at the time e.g. a bowl of dry Rice Krispies was fine as a meal because it was fortified with the nutrients I needed and I could manage to eat it. The lessons I learnt from her I continue to use now even though I’m long past my health condition.
wishing you luck

Hi OP,

A lot of what you're saying sounds fairly straightforward veganism or nearly veganism.

My husband has been vegan for over 40 years and I've been vegetarian, nearly vegan for over 30 . Anyway I just wanted to reassure you that veganism done properly isn't unhealthy in itself. It does sound like your daughter is approaching an ED though

Our daughter is autistic and has strange eating habits.

So surely she must be vegan, rather than vegetarian?

I'd just tell a white lie that they were. I mean how much meat can there be in a tablet? Its just powders manufactured in a lab. I think?

I'm vegetarian and use a lot of nutritional yeast in cooking, it's really good for B12. I've had low iron over the years but swear by this, and also Floradix do a liquid iron which is really palatable. https://floradix.co.uk/product/floradix-liquid-iron/

I worked this out for one of the vegetarian iron supplements. It would require 21 tablets to make the amount up! She can barely tolerate taking one!

I appreciate what you say for the B12 and the vit D.

There is a German floral iron liquid supplement (not sweet) which I used to take when anemic during pregnancy. Try getting that?

My GP prescribed me Aadfer- a liquid iron supplement. It is suitable for vegetarians and vegan.
It is supposedly chocolate flavour but tastes pretty bad- not at all like a sweet!

that's what she has been using in tablet form , unfortunately she needs 21 normal doses to make the strength of the prescription up!

🙄

Make sure she has vegetarian tablets - why are you being so difficult about this?

I'm not.

A lot of helpful people on here understand that i am not being difficult but am dealing with a teenager with extremely disordered eating who is unwell and refusing medication.

I am getting lots of helpful tips from posters who have similar experiences.

You are pretty much describing me 🙈(audhd) I wish so much I wasn't like this, I don't want to be and it's so hard at times I get on my own nerves. Have a look at spatone and floradix, like pp have said some is better than none. Take the iron with /alongside orange juice or vitamin c to help with absorption. Supermarkets seem to be pretty good with putting v or vegan on their products.
Where's the pp found iron infusions for £100???? I've looked near my and it's more like 500-1k!!!!

I’m vegetarian due to actual (rush A&E level) allergies so I know that there are genuinely vegetarian versions available. I also have a Dd with sulfite allergies which makes prescription meds fun. The surgery pharmacist can send the prescription with vegetarian on the script, maybe that would help with your Dd seeing it written down? (My dd1 is also Audhd so I get the having to see it thing) This is a little bit more than her just being picky she genuinely needs the alternative so they will prescribe

Could you discuss it with her as a religious belief? Muslims and Jews don't eat pork, but when a life is at stake that takes presidence.

With Judaism all other rules can be broken to save a life eg a woman in labour oh shabat can ask her husband to do something eg turning lights on/off that is normally forbidden.

Could you do the Joey and Phoebe swap from friends? You will take on her diet while she takes the pills?

I'm autistic and vegetarian, and I wouldn't take tablets with gelatine either. That's not extreme, it's fairly standard vegetarianism. There are iron sprays or liquid iron she can take, or non-gelatine tablets.

Not eating foods that are not specifically labelled vegetarian is a separate issue. It might be an idea to go through the ingredients of processed foods and get her to look up anything she doesn't recognise or is worried about. 'Okay, you're concerned there might be a meat-derived ingredient in this - let's check.'

If it's a control issue, making her fear that you'll sneak non-vegetarian ingredients into her diet (however insignificant you think they are) will make it much, much worse. If she trusts that you're 'on her side' and want to help her eat a healthy vegetarian diet, respecting her choice, it'll be much less of a battle.

I am prescribed 210mg ferrous fumerate. I just checked Google and it says vegetarian friendly.
when I was in hospital the pharmacist calculated the difference in iron and Floradix. It was a lot!

But you can buy ferrous fumerate otc.

Next time her prescription is due ask for non gelatine capsules for vit D so at least it’s in place for a couple of weeks time.
I get 20 000iu vit D vegetarian capsules.

I wonder whether the pharmacist was being a bit crap then, because they said that they couldn't do this. and it had to be the doctor, the doctor saw me and I ended up trying to good acceptable medication.

Even if it is on the script she will check individual ingredients.

Instead of rejecting her vegetarianism (it's not strict or radical not wanting to contaminate veg food with non-veg food or not wanting to eat sweets with gelatine in it - my DH is a Hindu and it's normal in that culture) in your place I would start learning about it and accepting it instead of being so negative. You should learn yourself how to maintain a healthy, vegetarian diet in order to educate/advise your daughter about it to keep her healthy. She would probably be fine if she ate sufficient number of legumes and leafy greens. There are veggie iron supplements on the market, you can check the ingredients before your buy them.

\she was prescribed ferrous fumerate, but when she looked at the individual ingredients there was something that wasn't vegetarian in the brand she was prescribed.

I have now found a brand that i think she will accept. It is arriving tomorrow so fingers crossed.

Ah that’s good.
once I started on the right dose I felt so much better.
Remember to have 2 hours minimum gap between iron and vit D doses to get maximum absorption. Don’t have caffeine within an hour of iron. Take with vit C/ OJ.

I'm not negative about vegetarianism. I have no idea what gives you that idea.

I"m negative about her being ill and refusing medication. I'm negative about her refusing to eat vegetarian food when we were in italy last year because it wasn't routinely labelled or marked vegetarian in a restaurant to the point that she was not eating anything for the majority of the week.

I am sure your husband doesn't not refuse to eat at all what is obviously vegetarian because it is not labelled in a way that he prefers.

It is annoying that manufacturers don’t routinely label products as vegetarian or vegan when they are. I do wonder if they think the V would put off meat eaters! I read all labels, twice sometimes on products I’ve not tried before if they’re not labelled.

that's really helpful, I didnt know about needing a gap between vit D. Thanks