Has Lounge covered this vagary of aging: Mishaps regarding pills and pill boxes?!1

[UTUSN]

First of all, there can be the sheer number of pill bottles, carrying them to the doctor's visits and the poor nurses having to re-write all the names and dosages.

So, usually it's the men carrying them in what are originally lunch packs - cloth insulated, square, brightly colored. Well, I started out with grocery plastic bags, but when it became clear that this number of pill bottles was going to be a permanent arrangement, I did the research for some kind of carrying container, aiming for something clear/transparent and ended up with just the thing, which turned out to be what I think are women's cosmetic (bags?), not really "bags" since they are as sturdy as lunch packs. Occasionally some medical women would have a shock-of-recognition reaction at the bag then giving me a scrutinizing look. I don't know why, since lots of the other old men are carrying all kinds of lunch packs and man-purses and whatever, and my clear container is indisputably full of pill bottles. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41p17aua+AL._AC_UL369_SR285,369_FMwebp_QL65_.jpg

Then came my little OCD type thing of keeping the pill bottles in the frig, which went on for a few years until some water dripped into the container and it was a *CRISIS* of damage control, draining the water out of the larger container, spreading the contents in the sun, salvaging the majority of the pills. After that I stopped with the frig.

For quite a long time everything was just once per day, so a 7 days' pill box with a single tier was fine. But then one pill went to twice per day and another one for night, so a double tier box took over. Hilariously, an 84 year old cousin who is a pharmacist is a fanatic about all kinds of supplements and uses a *multiple* tier (I don't even know how many) thing that looks like a tablet puzzle.

So the next crisis was recent, when my double pill box was at the edge of the table and as I passed by I knocked it to the floor and ALL of the pills burst out of their compartments. The initial panic ended when they were all on the table and it wasn't that big a deal to sort them out into their daily piles.

So it's a bygone routine for Saturdays to dole out the pills from the bottles into the week's box. Any other situations?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My doctors always want to know what my current medications are.

So I've made a list and I store it in my computer. When there are changes, I change whatever needs it: the drug, the dosage, whatever.

I date my list and keep the current copy in my desk, and another copy in my purse. Whoever needs to see it, sees it.

I don't think I've ever carried all the damn bottles in to any doctor's office.

When I travel, I carry the drugs in a large, sturdy ziplock plastic bag.

[Niagara]

2. I have a co-worker that keeps a list

of all her medications and dosages in her purse. She woke up one morning with an eye stroke.

She went to a specialist (a doctor she had never been to before this) and she pulled out her current list of meds to let him know what she was taking.

He asked her if she had memory problems. She told him no and asked him why he had asked her that.

It was because she kept a list of her meds and dosages and just assumed that she had dementia.

One would think that keeping a list would be a good idea since the first thing any good doctor asks for is current meds.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My doctors have always appreciated my list! It's so much easier to check against theirs.

I sure as hell don't have dementia! Not yet, anyway.

[Niagara]

7. Any good doctor would appreciate a current meds list.

I think my co-worker had a quack of a doctor for her eye stroke.

It drives me crazy when I walk out of a room and forget what I was going to do. Then, I have to walk back into the room to remember what the heck I was doing to begin with.

Sometimes, I have the condition called CRS (Can't Remember Sh!t) on occasion.

[SCantiGOP]

10. Not bad unless

you find yourself standing in front of the toilet thinking, “Now what did I come in here for?”

[UTUSN]

11. Bwah-hah, thanks for getting to the gist of my o.p., which was intended to be

a bit whimsical about a stage of ageing just before things get really bad - dropping pills, wetting pills, generally adjusting and not considering mishaps as the end of the world.

I'm an erratic poster with aspirations of quirkiness. A few "get" me as a (barely) acquired taste. Usually, I'm going for little, cheap laughs. I go wrong when I let myself be drawn into heavy implications and pretensions that I never intended to begin with. Gratefully, I haven't been subjected to a GD flamefest in quite awhile, NOT that I miss it and hope I'm not jinxing myself here!1

[Niagara]

17. You can be whimsical and quirky all that you want to be

[UTUSN]

18. Sweetness appreciated!

[Niagara]

15. Thankfully

that hasn't happened to me yet

[lastlib]

12. There really is a Hereafter....

When you walk into a room and ask yourself, "What am I here after?", then you'll believe it!

[Niagara]

16. Hahaha

I love it! Thank you!

[UTUSN]

5. Some doctors have posters requesting they be brought.

There are sticklers and non-sticklers in all (professions? ) . Some social services (caseworkers? ) used to write down their clients' Rx-es from the bottles at all visits.

I, too, went through a period when I used a computer document as you describe, beyond just the pills, on into every medical contact with a column for outcomes/changes, which some medical employees treated as an actual medical chart, as they should NOT have.

Since I am certainly not a medical or pharmacist professional, my typing from ignorance of names and abbreviations in my personal list and then having them possibly passed into official charts by lower level medical staff copying them down at face value could be a problem. Besides there is room for nefariousness, which showing the bottles might lessen, which is the individual doctor's prerogative not mine.

I'm just at the being old and dropping pills on the floor level of discussion.

[Dave in VA]

4. Wrist Band

Wife and I use a wrist band from myid. You can check them out at getmyid.com. You keep all your info online and even if you are unable to speak a medical professional can scan your wrist band and get all of the info you have made available online. Doc names, medications, emergency contacts, allergies, etc.

Hope this is useful.

[UTUSN]

6. Smart, thanks!

[Niagara]

8. That's a great idea! n/t

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. If you are taking even three different meds

you should have a list. You don't have to have dementia to not know exactly what each one is, even if you take them exactly as you are supposed to.

And a lot of people are taking four or more medications every day.

[Iggo]

13. Could be, but I probably just forgot.

[UTUSN]

14. We see what you did there, you can't fool us, no siree!1

[KY_EnviroGuy]

19. An alternate way to take your med list to a doctor is...

to save the drug store record sheets they give you with each script and take them to your doctor in an envelope (just one current one per drug). That provides positive proof you are using those meds.

However, because I don't have a lot of scripts, I personally prefer a table-style list created in a word processor because I use a lot of herbs and other supplements that they also want to know about.

I also highly recommend plastic storage boxes made by Really Useful Box Co., available in office supply stores like Office Depot. A bit expensive but last forever, they're very strong and they stack beautifully. See: http://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/usa/

Remember, anytime you spill pills and you're not sure what some are, just type in the numbers or other printing on the pill into WebMD at:

https://www.webmd.com/pill-identification/default.htm

...........

[Grammy23]

20. Sometimes carrying pill bottles is too cumbersome or overkill

if you also have your meds sorted into trays. I recently went to France for nearly two weeks and had my medicine in trays with a few days extra ...just in case. I read where it was a good idea to have the pill bottles with all the pertinent info....name, Rx number, dose, pharmacy, etc.

So to avoid having to pack all those bottles, in addition to my trays, I put the bottles flat on the kitchen table so I could read the label and snapped a picture with my iPad camera. Emailed it to myself and printed the picture and put it in my bag with the trays. I never needed it, thank goodness, but had the info and proof I had an RX, in case my pills were lost or a TSA person asked. The pill bottle labels even had the number that was pressed into the pill if there was an issue about the pills in the trays.