A mortar and pestle can be an unexpected feeding tube essential.
In order to add medications to a feeding tube, meds need to be pulverized into a powder. While plastic pill cutters and pulverizers abound, one caregiver I spoke to dealt with some pills that were just so hard they often broke the plastic ones. They simply didn’t break down easily. And she needed to get them ready for a feeding tube multiple times a day.
To solve her problem, she put the pills in a mortar and pestle she had bought with the intention of grinding spices for cooking. Now, she uses it to grind his meds into a fine powder in no time. “When I started doing that, my stress level just went down,” she says — this small change made everything so much easier.