I can barely begin to describe how today got complicated. I don't know why the name or the dosage listed on the bottle of the med I was trying to refill didn't match the official looking list than my mother brought with her to California. I only know that the nurse felt that the doctor here couldn't rightly refill it over the phone because it didn't match the list. So I drove 10 miles to the Walmart to get the medication since it was in the Walmart system in Maryland and could be easily transferred to California, because Walmart, like god, is everywhere. I don't know why the pharmacy at Vons didn't have the other of my mom's prescriptions when the nurse at the doctor's office assured me she'd call it in. I only know it was too late to call the doctor so I drove back across town to the Walmart only to find out that they couldn't fill it because it had already been filled at Von's. So I drove back to Von's. And, yes, the medication was there. I don't know why the name and dose on the package of Walmart meds matches exactly the name and dose on the bottle that's now empty, but the pills from the Walmart package look different from the pill in my mom's pillbox that she says was the last pill in the bottle. I only know that I would like to swallow all of the pills, eat all of the leftover Hallowe'en chocolate, drink all of the wine, and sleep all of the sleep.
"I have to get off this shit," my mom says when I finally return--as if she is a junkie--and maybe she is, in a way.
"Mom, you can't," I say. "This is cholesterol medication, and the label says you can't stop it suddenly." This was after she exclaimed that she didn't have high cholesterol, and I explained that the pills were why she didn't have high cholesterol. The other pill, I explained, she couldn't stop either because it was heart medication. Except it's not. It's brain medication. And obviously I should be the one taking it.
Anyone for a game of PILLVILLE ?
3 comments:
My mother hates being on so many pills too. And really, for a person her age, she's not on that many. One of the beautiful things about her being in Assisted Living (for us, anyway) is that they take care of the medications. They make sure she has them, make sure she takes them. And then they have to listen to her complain.
Which works well for me.
Weird. Hop on over to my blog for another episode of Pillville.
Great fun reading your blog! Thanks for sharing! You have a wonderful sense of humor! I know all about this because my sister and I kept our Mom alive, taking care of her, for 20 years. We wrote the lists of medications with hours and red marks (in red ink) for important medicines and times.
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