Medicine Time

I take way too many pills. There are two medications I take daily for mood and one I take as needed. One of the daily medicines I have to split over three doses because I don't have enough gut to take time release pills. That means I take at least four pills, spread out across the day, everyday. Don't even bring up what it was like after my surgery a few weeks back.

It could be worse. I could be taking a lot more pills for something else. There are lots of people who have to take a lot more pills than I do every day. It could also be that there were no pills to treat any of this. Thankfully neither are the case, so I'm not complaining. I only raise it because I get lost keeping track of what I take when.

Some time ago I considered one of those little weekly pill cases. I looked at them and it wasn't really a good solution for me. After surgery, my wife started writing down what she gave me and when she gave it to me. That got me thinking about medication administration records (MAR) that are used in hospitals. I thought that was a pretty good idea. I've decided to work with that for a while.

My version of a MAR is a bit less savvy than what is used in a hospital. Being a hospital IT guy, I know the sophistication of our electronic medication delivery and recording. There are bar codes, fancy dispensing machines, automatic flags to the pharmacy, etc. Obviously I don't have anything that fancy going. What I have is a little corner of my office whiteboard where I write the first letter of the medication followed by the time in 24 hour notation. This way it looks like some fancy project information I'm working on and no one ever questions what it is. It is working beautifully.

So it doesn't bring world peace or solve famine, but it works for keeping track of my medications. If you have trouble keeping track of the medication you are taking, consider it my gift to you.