Remembering Meds and Vitamins

The deeper I get into life as a bariatric patient, the more I truly believe the mantra of "failing to plan is planning to fail".

Someone, please buy me a bracelet.

Everything, from the gym, to food, to what the meat of this post is about, medication and vitamins, are carefully planned out. In just three months, this has become routine.

But lets turn our focus to strictly medication and vitamins. And lets start with storage. I use this pill holder. It's literally called "Lazy Me" and was the biggest one I could buy. Each day is broken up into four sections, which is exactly how my nutritionist said to pace things. I like it because I can pop one day out and take it with me all day. It's also just big enough for my biggest pills. I just have to worry about one little box all day.

Every Thursday night, I take my pill holder and all of my meds and put them into the proper days and times. In each section, I place the following:

• Morning
• Celebrate Calcium Citrate
• Actigall
• Colace
• Zyrtec
• Afternoon
• Celebrate Calcium Citrate
• Colace
• Protonix (completed regimine)
  
• Evening
• Celebrate Calcium Citrate
• Actigall
• Colace
• Bedtime
• Two chewable Multivitamin plus 60 iron tablets  (changed to splitting the MV from the Iron due to nausea issues)
  
• Two chewable Mutltivitamins
• One Iron 60 chewable

I plan on updating my meds and vitamins very soon. (Updated: 8/11/2017) The change will be taking out protonix and splitting my multivitamin and my iron. The flavor of those tablets make me really nauseous and I want to try splitting them up. It will end up costing me about $30 more every three months if I decide to keep the change.

I think one key to my success in remembering my meds and vitamins is to take everything in that section of pills at the appropriate time.

Speaking of appropriate times...this is a good time to share how I remember to take my pills.

My four times I get reminders are 5:45am, 11:30am, 2:30pm, and 6:00pm. I set these reminders through Baritastic but at three months I really don't need them. They've been great while I've been away though! The most important thing to remember is to space the calcium tablets out by at least two hours. So if I take my first section before leaving the house at 6:00am, and I look at the clock and it's 9:00am, I know I'm safe to go ahead and take it.