Managing Meds Can Be A Bitter Pill To Swallow

If you’re of a certain age, you probably take a daily prescription or two or 10.

You may also have advanced to the large size daily med dispenser. You may even have two of them. Maybe three – one for each meal. Or maybe you just keep all the prescription containers on the kitchen table next to those vitamins that are helping you retain your vim and vigor. Keeping your meds on the kitchen table provides a visual reminder that helps you more quickly transition the chit-chat with your neighbor over for coffee to the inevitable discussion of ills and pills.

You probably have reminder notes on each container since the printed label is too small to read or is written in what looks like a foreign language. Your personal notes might be your shorthand for things like “noon w/food” or “½ tab b4 bkfst.” The pill splitter is conveniently right there, next to the toothpicks. 

Organizing your meds can be more challenging than simply washing a handful of them down with coffee and if you find one of your pills on the floor, you might wonder how that got there and if you should you just take it. Doubling up or going without can produce very noticeable effects.

Some are to be taken in the morning. Some at night. Some every four hours. It’s almost a full-time job keeping track of all this and we pay dearly for the privilege, but that’s another story. A nurse once told me that if you take a number of pills once daily, just take that daily dose all at once so you don’t forget. I’m sure there are exceptions to that, but it works for me.

Recently, I received a notice in the mail (actually three notices) that my blood pressure med Losartan was being recalled because of a risk that it can cause cancer. Really? It indicated that all I needed to do was check my pill container for the lot number and compare it to the list provided. Well, there is no lot number on any of my prescriptions. The drug store said they don’t record that information with each prescription and have no way of knowing whether my prescription was filled from any of the recalled lots.

The state board of pharmacy says that each pharmacy knows the lot numbers of all medications it receives and should have been able to tell me if they had received any of the tainted medication. Their solution was to just contact my doctor for a prescription for a different med. So I will never know if I was taking a bad med and for how long.

My doctor prescribed an equivalent med, one that presumably would not cause cancer. But that med was backordered a month probably because with Losartan being recalled, there was now a run on it. As a pharmacist explained, Losartan is prescribed almost by default simply because it became available before others.

Meanwhile, I had decided it was less risky to take the med and run the risk of cancer than having a stroke or something from not taking it. I sent a note to my doctor about the replacement med not being available for a month so he prescribed a different one. But just as that was done, the pharmacy somehow located a 30-day supply of the first replacement. So I’m taking that now and the second replacement has been designated as a fallback if the other one is not available. Got all that?

After all of this took place, I saw on the news that the reason some blood pressure meds are suspects for possibly causing cancer is because of the unkempt conditions under which they are manufactured in some overseas factories. A contaminant formerly used in the production of rocket fuel was found in them. Very reassuring.

You are familiar with the possible side effects of your meds, right? We’re supposed to know this information, especially when combined with other meds and certain foods. And the dreaded alcohol combination warning. One of my high school classmates became a pharmacist and was appalled at the dangerous combinations of meds people were getting from their many doctors. She became frustrated that she couldn’t do anything about it. It was so bad that she’s now a gastroenterologist.

Remember when your doctor used to come into your appointment with an armload of handwritten paper records in an overstuffed folder? He or she would paw through it trying to figure out your history. It’s a lot better now that our records are digitized and cross-checking is built into the programs used to track our medical histories.

Lately, when I go to the doctor, a nurse goes over my list of meds with me, no matter what I’m there for. This, of course, is a good thing. But my list contains stuff I took maybe once many years ago. Some I don’t even remember taking. The nurse reads them by their generic names. If you know that acetaminophen is Tylenol, atorvastatin is Lipitor and warfarin is Coumadin, you might be a senior. And remember – we’re all supposed to carry an up-to-date list of our meds with us at all times.

It’s also your cheat sheet to boost your med cred when your chit-chat comes around to ills and pills.