WetLeather Motorcycle Rider Information

For those of you who didn't know I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes about five years ago. Part of my life has become my medicine routine. Over the last year I had been using Byetta combined with Actos, Metformin and Ameryl to control my blood sugar. This had been pretty successful until I chose to discontinue Actos in the late summer.

Actos is a drug in the same family as Avandia which was sited for causing potential heart attack problems this past year. Actually I learned about the relationship after I decided to quit. I talked to my doctor and told him that the swelling and weight gain were killing me (even if my bood sugar was good). After stopping Actos my blood sugars were not nearly as good as they had been but I lost about 20 lbs. of water in about three weeks. I also tried switching from Byetta to Januvia with really poor results (I went back to Byetta). Byetta has the side effect of inducing mild but predictable nausea usually within a couple of hours after it is administered. I hoped the new drug would work as well but avoid the nausea. C'est la vie.

Anyway after the surgery I was told to not use Byetta. That left Metformin and Ameryl. Ameryl is easy to take since the pills are tiny and can be broken in half (I was only going to take a half pill after surgery). Metformin comes in a variety of pill sizes based on dose. My current pills were 1000mg honkers. Too big for a guy with a little stomach. My endocrinologist suggested liquid Metformin. The hospital pharmacy had never heard of it and provided crushed tablets. After returning home Deb tried Freddie's Pharmacy and they sent us to a formulary in Tigard who didn't know anything about it either.

Google to the rescue. A search for liquid metformin found us www.riomet.com. We forwarded this info to Freddie's Pharmacy who ordered it. I picked up the bottle yesterday. Let me pause and describe the taste of crushed metformin tablets for you.

I think that if one could grind up typical household garbage and liquify it that it would taste better than metformin powder (from the 1000mg tabs). I have no recollection of ever tasting anything as vile and repulsive as that powder. I tried taking it with teaspons of yogurt to make it faster to swallow. No luck. Just as bad. Forget about lethal injection. You want cruel and unusual? Go for ground up Metformin!

I measured out the 10mls of RioMet and took it without any concerns. I have to say that aside from going down faster RioMet is pretty awful, too. I had to hunt around the label to discover that the "flavor" is "cherry". Mind you this is a clear solution (doesn't even need shaking). Cherry should be red. How is my brain supposed to know what the meds are going to taste like if they are colorless? Anyway, I had a second dose with breakfast this morning and it was not quite as bad (now that my expectations are properly calibrated). Isn't that always the case?