Seriously, I think you're fighting an uphill battle when you feel you have to smuggle the medicine into him somehow. Besides, he's 12 - you should be able to explain things in full and ask HIM to come up with a way to get the medicine into him.
One of my sisters had a young child who refused to take his medicine. I think a lot of my attitudes about dosing my kids came from watching my mother and sister make A LOT of mistakes. Don't get me wrong, my mother was a genius when it came to child rearing, but this boy had her beat.
Background - my sister, at the time, owned a pub. A typical Aussie country pub, out bush. "On the outer Barcoo, where churches are few and men of religion are scanty, on a road seldom crossed save by men who are lost, One Michael McGee had a shanty." (Banjo Patterson, "The Bush Christening")
THAT sort of pub.
The place was rough. My sister spent a lot of respite time back with us in Sydney, especially when she had her second child. By this stage hr boy was 3 and a real handful. With hindsight, it's possible he was refusing medicine because a long-term guest at the pub was drugging him and molesting him (my sister still is brilliant at denial). Whatever the reason - this was a kid with chronic tonsillitis, middle ear infection and asthma. He had to have medicine and he was very clever at refusing it. My mother would put his medicine in milk shakes, in strongly flavoured cordial, in whatever she could. Frankly I think she would have been better off getting his antibiotics in capsule form and either teaching him to swallow capsules (I know, but even at 3 it can be done) or opening up the capsules and sprinkling the contents onto a peanut butter sandwich.
What I learned -
* Liquids taste funny and are coloured. They are hard to hide.
* The more you dilute a liquid (to try to hide the taste) the more volume you have to get down the kid's neck. Somehow.
* The more you try to hide a kid's medicine, the less the kid will trust you. And with my nephew, it turned out that trust was later on a big issue.
What I did when it was my turn - I used syringes. Our place must have looked like a junkie's paradise. We had (still have) syringes everywhere. Someone's on rough-smelling, syrupy cough mixture? You know the stuff where half of it stays glued to the side of the medicine glass, so you add water, swill it around and have to drink that too? I HATED that as a kid. But a syringe - you squirt it down so fast, it hits the back of the throat and is swallowed so fast that most of it bypasses the taste buds. Plus, it gets squeezed out of the syringe so there isn't enough residue to worry about. It's also a lot easier to fill a syringe accurately, than to try to fill a medicine glass. No needle, of course - just the plastic syringe. The tip of the syringe is blunt and plastic, also very short. You can't do any harm with it.
Because we used syringes, the kids always knew up front that it was medicine they were getting. Total honesty. If it was nasty-tasting medicine it was a pity, but the kids knew our method was the one that helped THEM the most. And just as it is easier to worm a dog or cat with a syringe, or to drench a sheep or cow with a drench gun, the most difficult kid can be held down and 'drenched' with a syringe. But keep the volume small, so the task is over and done with, then if needed you shove in a sugar dose (a shot of cordial extract or a toffee) as a reward for taking the medicine.
A lot of fibre supplements are gluggy anf gelatinous, very hard for some kids to cope with. Psyllium, for example (as in Metamucil) is something I just can't take. husband takes the unflavoured form in milk, he says it's like a milkshake. He can keep it. You can also take psyllium in capsule form. I tried that - no problem with the texture - but my body objected. Psyllium is something my body is sensitive to, so it is off my list.
Muesli is good, if you avoid the high fat, high sugar toasted mueslis. difficult child 3 was put onto muesli earlier this year, after HIS latest constipation/bowel problem scare. He was told by the doctor to eat more fibre and drink more water, eating muesli was his fibre compromise.
A kid with toiletting problems - even though difficult child 3's language skills were still not great, we found a way to talk to him about what was needed. We went to an expert on bladder training (we handled the bowel problems ourselves) and SHE talked to him also. We dumbed down basic anatomy and physiology to a level the child could handle. Your son should be able to understand this.
You've given him a scare about what will happen if this gets to the need for medical intervention. OK, fair enough. You've made a start. But if you can follow through with a detailed diagram and description of WHY this needs to be fixed - by him and you and any health professionals, all working as a team.
Here's my explanation for thirteen year olds:
Keeping it simple - food goes in. It has to - our bodies need fuel. We need GOOD fuel, our bodies are still adapted to hunter-gatherer diet of large hunks of meat occasionally, with regular amounts of whatever berries, roots, fruit and plants are in season. This provides a variety of fresh food which contain carbohydrates, micro-nutrients, vitamins and FIBRE. And with our modern diets we often miss out on some of these vital foods, which makes the problem worse.
We also miss out on water. We need water. It quenches thirst, it soaks into every cell in our bodies, it keeps everything working well.
And we need to excrete. Because we are adapted for a variety of foods, and those foods are adapted to feed a variety of other organisms as well as adapted to propagate those foods themselves, there IS going to be waste. It can't be avoided. In a traditional hunter-gatherer diet, most of that waste would be undigested (or indigestible) fibre. Our bodies are designed to not only excrete this, but to use it to help excrete other waste products which are less easy to shift.
Food goes into the mouth and is chewed. Our saliva is the first liquid mixed with the food (which itself contains moisture). In the stomach, gastric juices are secreted (including dilute hydrochloric acid). All these processes require you to be well hydrated.
As soon as we swallow, peristalsis begins. This is wave after wave of rhythmic contraction, like wringing out a cloth by running your finger and thumb in a ring around it and pulling down. This peristalsis should continue all the way through, from beginning to end. But it needs enough material to be there, and to be squishy enough, to work properly.
The stomach also pumps in bile to help emulsify the food, to make the particle size really tiny. This helps the food to get absorbed easily. Bile tastes awful but at this level you have no taste buds. You only taste it if you throw up. Not nice. Best to keep it where it is doing good.
Bile is made from old, broken down blood cells - a job the liver does. This means that bile salts are a waste product too, but a waste product that the body uses in the stomach to good effect -genius, eh? But that is also why what we excrete in terms of solid waste, is brown.
Back to the stomach and small intestine. Here, food broken down thoroughly is getting absorbed. It is now almost at the molecular level. Once in the bloodstream it goes to the liver (which cleans it up) and then to every cell in the body, to supply each cell with energy and nutrients. The blood also picks up waste products for disposal. Waste products at THIS level are mostly dealt with by the lungs and kidneys (ie that's how they get out of the body).
Back to the intestine - not everything got absorbed. And a good thing, too. If just about everything got absorbed except a tiny smear, it would take a long time for successive meals to build up enough waste, for the body to be able to move it along and get rid of it. In the extra time it would take, that waste sits there and putrefies, like a compost heap managed badly. Vermin proliferate (bacteria and parasites, in this case). Some breakdown products also find their way into the blood stream, which makes the liver have to work harder. And if bad stuff gets into the bloodstream faster than the liver can cope, it affects you. Like alcohol - drink it too fast and the liver can't catch it all, and you get drunk. But if you try to drink slow enough for the liver, the ice melts and the drink warms up.
Now we have a small intestine merging into the large - all that gets absorbed here is water (hopefully). We don't want waste products absorbed here, but again, too much transit time (like an overcrowded train system at peak hour) and everything backs up.
Crowded trains are still rigid, they can't stretch. But your intestine can. It's not good for it to have to do it, but it can. An intestine that is slow because there isn't enough material in it, not enough fibre, will not only stretch, but with putrefying contents it can make you feel unwell. It also makes the intestine not work so well. It all makes it worse.
Slow transit also means the contents dry out. This makes it hurt more, and slows it down more. If you make an effort to drink more water, this makes a HUGE difference. But if the problem is really bad, you may need some extra medical help to begin to turn the problem around and fix it.
The large intestine is called "large" for a good reason. At this point, it is designed to hold the contents, churn them around like a gardener forking over his compost heap to keep it healthy and sweet, and to move things along to the exit sign.
The exit - the descending colon and rectum. If the rectum is filling up, you SHOULD feel it and know to go to the toilet and "spend a penny", as my mother used to call it. Take the Gameboy or a good book and be prepared to give your body plenty of time.
Not everybody feels the rectum filling up. AND it can stretch, unhealthily. Hey, if you delay, it HAS to stretch, you've given it no choice. So if you have a body that isn't good at telling you when to go, you should make a point of going anyway, at least once a day at the same time. Eventually your body will get the hint. And in the meantime, you will read more chapters of your book or advance a few more levels on your Gameboy.
What happens if things don't work properly?
If things move too slowly, your body absorbs toxins (poisons) made as the waste decays inside your body. If it moves too slowly, it dries out and getting rid of it can feel like trying to pass barbed wire. Your anus can actually get small tears in it which hurt, and mean that NEXT time hurts too.
If things get stretched inside, especially for too much of the length, you can get a condition called diverticulitis. It means small pockets form, like little blowouts of a car tyre. And if they get inflamed or infected (which happens when bits of waste break off and get trapped in these bubbles) then it can be like appendicitis, multiplied. If it's really bad, you make have to have an operation to remove part of your insides to stop the pain. But they won't do this until they've done other, invasive tests (the least of which is a doctor pushing things up the back way to have a look-see at what is going on). Doctors don't do this for fun - I doubt they like it either, but sometimes it has to be done.
Long-term, a slow transit time and absorption of toxins can cause a lot of other health problems.
Another BIG problem when solids in the intestine get TOO solid - peristalsis
doesn't move it fast enough, other liquids get squeezed past the obstacle and you get leakage. Not nice - it feels awful, because it's squeezed past a big lump of decaying matter it smells awful, and next to your skin it burns and makes your rear end painfully sore. By this stage, you're probably not feeling as well as you should be. And you're probably also feeling depressed - not just for being in this state, but because the toxins leaking back into your bloodstream are affecting your body badly.
But it can be fixed. And it's not that difficult. It means you have to work at getting well, but the rewards are great. When everything is working well you will almost certainly be going to the toilet more often, but that's OK, that's what it's for. We all do it.
Getting the waste out of your body at the right speed makes you feel energetic, alert, smarter, happier and LIGHTER. It also helps you enjoy y our food more because it will taste better.
How do you do it? Three words -
1) Fibre. Make sure there is plenty in your diet - it doesn't have to taste like cardboard, either. There are some really delicious foods which contain fibre in soluble form, you're hardly aware of it. It's an easy research project, or you can see a dietician and ask for help for your particular problem.
2) Fluids. Keep the water up. You could take all the fibre in the world, but without the fluids you need, you will still be constipated. Your body invests a lot of fluid in your body functions, including your digestion. The least you could do is give some back to it.
3) Frequency. Take yourself to the "reading room" at least once a day at the same time, and have a good try. Don't force too hard or you can get other problems (which are also related to letting your bowel stretch too much and for too long). Your body will get the message soon.
Sometimes while trying to get fixed up, you will need to take some medicine. If you need to, find out more about how that medicine works, and give it a helping hand by watching your three Fs. And if you can find natural sources of food and drink which will help, then great! Not everything that can go wrong with you can have such a tasty treatment plan.
But whatever you do from here - you need to keep up with it. However, once you begin to feel better, keeping up with treatment is easy. And nobody needs to even notice!
Anyway, that's the sort of thing I mean. If you can explain things to him like this, you are doing your darndest to enlist him in trying to help himself. ANd if YOU can't explain it to him, take him to that gastroenterologist and get HIM to explain!
And I didn't get to mention the bladder, and how it fits in. I will if you want me to, but this should be way enough.
Marg