Old Man Pills

[canyonwalker]

For a while now I've joking remarked about my "old man pills" and "old man pill sorter". I don't share that sly reference with everyone, though; just those I think are old enough to get it.

What's an "old man pill sorter"? It's one of these:



Okay, it's also an old woman pill sorter, or an old person pill sorter. I mean, it's not gendered. But it is generally age-aligned. You buy one of these (or, worse, multiples) when you have so many pills you can't keep them straight otherwise.

I knew what these were when I was younger. My grandma had one. I didn't expect to need one until I was, like, 70.

I sure didn't need these when I was younger. Through my20s and 30s I didn't gobble a bunch of pills daily. I took a multivitamin, maybe one or two other supplements if I was trying something, and an allergy pill during allergy season. Plus maybe a prescription pill for a week at a time if I was sick with something— which was rare. I could manage all that by just grabbing pills one at a time from their bottles.

But for the last few years now I've become an Older American— which is to say, a Well Medicated American. And it happened well before 70. Now in addition to a few supplements I've long taken, I'm taking a pill of this to keep that level down, then another pill to counteract side effect #1 of that pill, plus yet-another pill to minimize side effect #2, plus... well, you get the picture. ...And in case you don't get the picture, it looks exactly like the one above. 🤣

Comments

[some_other_dave]

Is that a photo of what you take daily?

I've had a pill minder for quite a number of years now. I was taking two medications and a vitamin, and it was a lot easier to remember if I took my pills in the morning if I had them sorted by day of the week. One of my pills morphed into two for a number of years, and eventually another one got added for another malady. (Well, another symptom of the original malady that I'm old and fat and don't eat that healthy.)

The two-pill med recently dropped to one, and I stopped taking the vitamin. But having the pills sorted is still really handy.

I also have a single evening pill, which I don't use an organizer for.

Curiously, I mixed up one of my morning pills with my evening pill for a week or so. No side effects, though.

[sorcyress]

I take daily ADHD and birth control meds, and occasionally throw in additional supplements (iron, vitamin D) when it feels necessary. I have a cool hip young person pill sorter instead of old man --I can tell it's hip because it's shaped like a heptagon and I got it when I was 15 ;)

My biggest med complaint is that my birth control comes in a month-based blister pack, labeled with the days of the week on it, and that is SO USEFUL for telling whether or not I've taken it that day. Which is why I take my meds together, because gods, as a person with ADHD, it is _so nice_ to have an easy calendar visual of "did you take today's pill". I would be thrilled to switch their form factors, and have the ADHD pills in the nicely organized calendar pack instead!

~Sor

[canyonwalker]

I seriously considered buying a cool, hip, not-quite-so-old person pill sorter— one of the round-ish shapes with 7 compartments like the petals of a flower, instead of a stodgy, been-the-same-since-at-least-the-1980s old person pill sorter— but when I decided it was time to acknowledge I'd joined the ranks of Middle Aged Americans With Too Many Pills I just wanted to be done with it fast and not spend a lot of time or mental toil picking the ideal pill sorter. It's like by not customizing it I have resisted interweaving it with my identity. It's just a common tool that's useful, like a rake hanging in the shed vs. the beloved car parked in the driveway. People see your car and read into that things about you. Nobody ponders what your choice of rake says.

[canyonwalker]

Late response but, yeah, those are my actual pills. As a badly overweight age 50+ American I think those are par for the course. 😓