Karen gave me the plastic pillbox last Christmas as one of my stocking stuffer gifts. I laughed, but I also understood immediately the thoughtfulness behind her present. She knows I have to gulp a bunch of medications and supplements every day in my current condition, and being the extremely organized person she is (she's a FranklinCovey trainer, you know), she wanted to help me do so as efficiently as possible.
I can take them without water now. So adept have I become at swallowing pills that, except for the front-loaded morning dosage that can be as many as 11 pills at once, at the appointed times throughout the day I just pop 'em in my mouth like breath mints and let them slide down my throat. This is not a skill I wanted to become proficient in, but if practice makes perfect I should be nearly immaculate.
I've talked about my medications before but never in much detail, so I thought I'd like to introduce them to you.
Every day I take:
25 mg of carvedilol, a non-selective beta blocker to control my high blood pressure (thought to be the primary cause of my kidney distress), twice a day;
10 mg of prevastatin, to reduce my total and LDL cholesterol;
100 mg of allopurinol, intended to decrease the levels of uric acid in my body and prevent a recurrence of searingly painful gout, twice a day;
160 mg of Exforge, also prescribed for treatment of high blood pressure;
25 mcg of Vitamin D, a supplement to replace the vitamin that healthy kidneys naturally produce to maintain proper phosphorus and calcium levels in the body;
one-half of a Centrum Silver multivitamin, as my kidney specialist was concerned about the potential effects of taking some vitamins at their full potency (it's bad enough that it's a Centrum "Silver," but then only half a pill? Boy, does that make you feel old!);
100 mg of Vitamin B-1, which I added on my own. I read somewhere that it could help in the treatment of kidney disease, and my doctors, while skeptical, admitted that it couldn't hurt.
In addition, every other day I also take:
0.6 mg of colchicine, also prescribed to prevent my gout from flaring up again, and
1 mcg of zemplar, (and I'm taking this off the Web site), "a synthetically manufactured...active form of Vitamin D indicated for the prevention and treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism in chronic kidney disease."
It's quite an assortment. I don't know how AIDS patients feel, but I can empathize. If you didn't think or feel that you were sick, pouring a pile of pills into your hand every day certainly will serve as a reminder. When I travel for more than a few days, it takes me almost a half-hour to sort all my medications and supplements, recall the proper dosages and stick them in their appropriate Monday-through-Sunday slot in my neon green pill case.
I guess it's that shade of electric green so I won't lose the case.
Not that I wouldn't like to.
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