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Posted by on Sep 21, 2015 in General | 18 comments

Prescription day RA and Diabetes

Prescription day RA and Diabetes

This is day 1 #RABlog week. The day one prompt is:

RABlogbadgeA day (or an hour) in your life – Pick a day, an hour or half a day and tell us what happens? Are you stiff when you get up in the morning? Tell us about getting ready to go somewhere, or going to a restaurant. Pick any unit of time and tell us what your life consists of.

Prescription day

Monday is prescription day. I sort my pills for the week, check which ones need to be refilled, call the pharmacist and review my weekly schedule. It feels like a ridiculous Groundhog Day movie. It recurs every week like clockwork and with about the same cadence.

Get out the morning pill containers. Sort 7 days of pills, set aside the bottles for refills. Put away the morning set. Then repeat the same procedure for the evening pills. AM and PM pills have separate sides of the cabinet in my office. The most difficult thing about pill day is the recognition of what modern pharmacology has brought me. I can count on pills to keep my blood flowing, my cholesterol is in check, my blood pressure is near perfect, the nerves in my feet do not hurt near as much as they sued to and best of all, I pee sort of on cue. What more can a man ask for? Well time for one thing. I would like mine back. All this pill sorting and doctor calling is a lot.

2014-05-12 06.37.22Chronic disease

So how does one get to such a place? First, you have three chronic diseases. Each disease requires pills. Second find doctors who are not afraid to attack these diseases with all available means. Of course the plan includes a large amount of pills. Third see 13 doctors at least once annually. Seeing doctors is my hobby and I am good at it. I have figured out how to be slightly early for my appointment, I know the receptionist’s names, and I always try to make my next appointment before I leave the office. I know the medical assistants, the nurses and the phlebotomists. I call the pharmacist by name I know what their children are up to. What most people do not understand is the time it takes to have RA.

All of these connections and relationships are reflected back to me each week in the hour I spend sorting pills. During that hour I think of the appointments I have to reschedule, the prescriptions I need to renew, who I need to call and who owes me a call back. Sometimes I feel like a socialite checking off the medical professionals I mingle with. Each pill has a history, a future and as I drop them into my sort bin a present.

Sorting

2014-05-12 06.50.00It might sound like I enjoy pill hour each Monday. I do not. As I sort those pills, I think what my life has become. Right now I am taking 25 pills a day in 16 prescriptions. Honestly, I feel like my grandmother. When I was a child she took a few less pills each day and my parents used to say that pill A was fighting B to produce an unexpected result Y. But my doctors all tell me this is not true in my case. They reassure me I am on the bare minimum number of pills to keep things in check. But what I do not tell them is that I am so sick of taking pills I just about want to toss the whole thing out.

But then I remind myself what choice do I have? How long would I last without the blood pressure medication, methotrexate, or other immune suppressants? How far would I get without insulin and test strips? How long could I live if I stopped taking pills?

Not much different

I doubt I am not much different than most people with RA regarding my pill count. Because of the multiple diseases I may take few more pills than others, but I know most of us have a collection of doctors, pharmacists and pills to contend with.

So I sort my pills for the week. And each week I always return to one question? What am I doing for others that justifies this expense, effort, and time? I have found that pill hour goes better if I can tell myself I am helping others. This hour each week is a causality in the fight against RA. I pray someday we can stop the war, or at least reduce this causality.

-30-

rick

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18 Comments

  1. So funny that in your first paragraph you reference Groundhog Day. I have done the same thing on one day this week. And my pill containers are just like yours too – you can see them today in the consecutive post, haha I guess we all have a lot in common

    • Annette: It is so funny we talk about groundhogs. But of course pill day is like that movie Groundhog day. I hope I can attack the day with even half the humor Bill Murray found, to escape his Ground hog Day. Who knows, humor might be the best way out? Naw,, LOL

      rick

  2. Quite the number of pills, Rick. It’s like you’re the general of an army keeping them organized and making sure that they do their job. And I suppose you are fighting a war against RA, diabetes, and AS….

    • Laddie, it is an amazing collection of stuff I would rather not know about. However, I think reading the other blogs this morning, I may be a piker. LOL I hope you get to look over the amazing content for #RABlog week. If you are interested, you can find all of the daily posts at:

      http://bit.ly/1LVYbyl

      rick

  3. Hi Rick

    Now that is some meds there, got to be a record !

    Love the line you wrote:
    ****
    Seeing doctors is my hobby and I am good at it.
    ****
    Classic line hehe

    Cheers

    Sean

    • Sean: Thanks for the note. I think chasing doctors i my new hobby. I could certifiably give up that skill. After all I bet I could find other pursuits. :}

  4. Well said Rick! No one ever thinks about what a time suck being sick is. Counting out meds for the week is a huge deal and so important. Folks outside of our world don’t understand that. Well, they didn’t. Now they will.

    • Elise: I used to say (when I was working) that I had a job I did not need RA as well. Today RA and Diabetes are my job. Gosh I dislike knowing that, Yes this the one job I got without applying.

      rick

  5. Rick, “Are you stiff when you get up in the morning?” is a good prompt for me. I can barely move when I wake up, take my thyroid and Celebrex pills, slowly get dressed and wait out the hour that is required before eating or drinking after thyroid. The Celebrex helps, but not as much as before my doctor cut the dose in half to save my heart. My husband has made coffee by then; after coffee my day starts.

    • Trudy: I am stiff when I get up. Darn, I hate that. Actually, it is the (pain and stiffness) that usually interferes with my sleep and causes me to get out of bed. I often think that RA is such a difficult disease because we cannot adequately express things like stiffness, fatigue and pain.

      Also I hope you get to check out all the amazing blogs happening this week. Some folks have captured this topic perfectly. You can catch the all the blogs by topic at http://bit.ly/1LVYbyl

      rick

  6. I’m not sure how many pills my dad takes (he has had RA since he was 35), but he does say that because of all them he is “chemically healthy”.

    • Jenn:

      Chemically healthy, I love that. i think I am chemically supported. LOL

      rick

    • Hi Sam:

      Go to this page, select the hot link on the prompt and enter the name of your name and the name of you blog I assume you want to use Sam, which is fine, some of us use full names others not.

      http://bit.ly/1LVYbyl

      you can also link your blog to the entire effort at this page:

      http://bit.ly/1PSHNwi

      Thank you for the kind comments, I love your blog today

      rick

  7. I admire the way you make serious points while still managing to inject such humor into your post!!

    And YAY FOR RA BLOG WEEK!!

    • It is really going well Karen, We have about 70 blogs written so far on Wednesday midday and everyone loves the concept. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Now if I could do humor and serious points all the time, I might really have something. 🙂 Thank you do much for the kind comments.

  8. Hi Rick,
    Great blog! I can see how challenging is for my clients to manage diabetes alone, especially Type 1. Adding RA to the equation makes you a Superman.

    • Thank you for the kind comment Christina. I and some of the other folks I know who have both Type 1 D and RA, say hands down, we would trade having diabetes for RA any day. In fact, I have talked to maybe seven (not a big sample) people with both issues and they all say the same thing.

      rick

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