My elderly father takes a number of medications and supplements to treat his many conditions ranging from heart disease and diabetes to anemia and gastropareses.. The need to separate certain prescriptions and supplements was a given as he was taking half in the morning and the rest in the evening causing serious side effects and making nearly every one of his conditions worse due to side effects of drug interactions. The usual pill trays weren't working because they only marked Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Bedtime at best and he has to have something 9 times a day.
After doing extensive online research to determine the safest and most beneficial combinations, I printed a list showing everything drug and supplement he was taking, the time of day and whether it was with or without food and gave a copy to each of his doctors for review. They all agreed to this systematic dosage approach, so the next hurdle was to figure out how to make it happen. I needed a fool-proof, orderly way of dispensing his meds so they were taken at the right time of day and was user-friendly, as well.
I liked the bags a lot for sturdiness and ease of opening and closing. The size was fine, but the 'write on' place shown on the front of the pills was not adequate for his needs. The way they come would probably be fine for someone else, but for his multiple meds, I needed more space to write than what is offered on the bag.
I bought adhesive labels and attached one to each bag. I assigned each day of the week with a certain color permanent marker and went to town. I set out 9 bags for the first day - used a colored marker to write all the information for that day on all 9 bags and numbered the bags 1-9. A typical days worth of pill bags would read like this: (In purple marker) SUNDAY - 1 - Take 30 minutes BEFORE breakfast (and then the meds were listed and put in the bag) Next bag read SUNDAY - 2 - Take WITH breakfast, etc. I then put each days 9 bags in a larger zip bag and labeled it SUNDAY. For each day of the week, I used a different color marker. I felt this was an important part of the system because he knows that everything purple is SUNDAY and the 1-9 numbers helps him make sure he hasn't misplaced a bag or forgotten to take one.
It was a time consuming process the first time around, but he has loved this system. I can fill a months worth of his meds, am always aware of what meds need to be ordered and yet still have enough already set aside in the pill bags for a week or two. No waiting until the last minute to reorder. As his meds are changed, I can pull the label off the bag and replace with the corrected version. The other upside to the pill bags is that he can take his 'BEFORE dinner' dose as he leaves the house and he has a 'Take WITH dinner' pill bag in his pocket when he gets to the restaurant.
So while this review was more on what I did with the bags than the actual product its self, I felt that explaining how I used them might give someone in the same boat a solution to dispensing many medications when the usual plastic boxes aren't enough
Read More...21 persons found it helpful
