Ways to Manage Your Medications

I have been taking different medications since 1963, so the years have passed me by, but the medications haven’t. I take a total of 6 pills every single day of my life and I don’t see that slowing down anytime soon. I must take some in the morning and some at night. The thing that is killing me now is that I can’t remember if I have taken them or not. Along with getting older, constant pain, and brain fog, I seem to have to find ways to tackle this problem.

Organizing my medications

The first thing I did was to get organized. I have all these bottles of pills in my purse, desk drawer and bedroom stand. I’m glad I decided to do this as I saw that I was taking medications that were outdated and taking medicine with lower doses than what my doctor had increased the dosage too.

Keeping track of daily doses

I decided to invest in a pill organizer, they are very cheap. It has different compartments in it for each day; but because I had to take pills twice a day, I also had to keep a schedule of which pills I take at night and which ones during the day. I had to write down if it was a large pink pill or a small pink pill. It’s very daunting, but you want to take the right pill at the right time. You might be able to find a pill organizer with different compartments for the morning, noon and night.

My biggest downfall is that I keep every pill bottle as if it still has medication in it. As I stated earlier it could be outdated or the dosage has changed. Go through all those old bottles and get rid of them. Now make a list of everything that you take. Include how much you take, how often, and the dosage. It might be a good idea to give a copy to your doctor to look over to make sure you are taking the right stuff.

Using technology to stay organized

If you have a smartphone you can look up applications that can help you manage your drugs and can tell you about drug interactions between other drugs. They called these smartphones for a reason; they can help you look up information on a certain medication, and help you set up a schedule, and to schedule reminders. These are all free to users. They can sound alarms or make your phone ring as a reminder. I know some medicines need to stay refrigerator, keep track of the ones need that.

Having enough medication

If you see you are running out of your medication call your drug store well in advance. You don’t want to run out of pain pills or high blood pressure medications and you surely would not want to take drugs that the date expired. I’m so bad at letting my refills run out. Don’t do this, it will cause you to miss doses.

If you think you may need a refill on a medication that has no refills left, call your doctor's office as soon as possible to allow time for the doctor to call the pharmacist. If your traveling keep your medication with you in case your luggage gets lost and take extra pills in case you get stranded somewhere.

Working with your healthcare team to stay organized

As I’ve got older and have more medications to take; I am finding that this is a daunting task, but we just need to plan better and be more organized. We need to take our medications at the right time. We all want to live a long healthy life. I know I do.

If you find that taking several pills a day is unclear, maybe your doctor can give you something to take less frequently. Your pharmacist is there to help also; they might be able to work on a checklist for you.

Get organizing!

The bottom line is that we take medications to get better. We have to be careful that we take our drugs as prescribed by our doctors. Get organized and get a method in place so we don’t have to worry about taking them wrong.