Category: Health and Wellness
I am curious to know if any blind people who have taken medications have ever
had any mishaps with them due to them being unable to read the instruction
label? I experienced this last year, and though nothing really bad happened I
still sort of feel weird about it and am wondering if there are others out there
who have ever experienced this as well?
No, I haven't. A couple suggestions. Ask your doctor or pharmacist to give you the specific instructions on how to take the medication, and find a way to write it down so you can read it. Write it, record it, whatever, just some way that you can reference it later. Also, most pharmacy websites like Walgreens have areas where you can look up specific medicines, their side effects, drug interactions, etc.
If need be, have the pharmacist take a pill out of the bottle and feel its shape. Label bottles in braille if need be or record specifics about the pill. Walgreens now has talking pill bottle tops but the tops don't stick to the bottles that well. A pharmacist can record information on the top if need be and when you get home, you can write the info down. I knew someone who almost died because he took a wrong pill that his wife was taking. He actually had liver damage.
I've never had this happen to me, but asking your pharmacy if they carry the talking prescription labels that have been mentioned here, will probably save you a lot of worry/heartache in the future.
You can also request for them to put them in differently shaped bottles. That's
what I do if I ever need medication.
And also, you can use different shaped bump dots and squares on the caps to also help identify one prescription from another.
I've been trying to get my pharmacy to use talking labels or caps for years but no go.
Also, I don't know if you have them over where you are, but your pharmacist can do up webster packs.
Since my kidney transplant, I've gone from about 5 tablets a day to about 20 a day and a few of them feel the same so I'd have no way of remembering the feel of all of them much less remembering what each one is called and for.
The webster packs take in one week of morning lunch, dinner and supper. The pharmacist puts the tablets for each session under little plastic bubbles; they're hard to explain.
I agree with rdfreak - you should ask if your pharmacy can put your
medicines in blister packages. I used to work in pharmacy so I know that this
service is available. While it's a time consuming process to do, it's not
difficult for the Pharmacy Technician to do.
What it involves is a piece of card board about 8.5 by 22 inches in size or 17
x 11 inches in size (the orientation will depend on the manufacturer and
won't affect the final product)... when it's folded in half, the resulting product
is about the size of a Letter Size or A4 size sheet of paper.
The cardboard has two sets of 28 holes punched into it, four columns wide by
seven rows high. This allows for breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime doses
of medications for 7 days.
The pharmacy technician then takes a special plastic sheet that is the same
size as the cardboard and places it onto the cardboard... the plastic sheet
has 28 bubbles/blisters on it that have been aligned to fit the holes in the
cardboard, and it's into these bubbles/blisters that your dose of medication
goes into. The blisters come in various sizes from ones that feel like the
buttons on a land line phone for small tablets, to really deep blisters to hold
the big yucky potassium tablets that rdfreak probably takes.
The plastic sheet can be cut by the pharmacy to make up what ever custom
dosing regime is needed by the patient... say you need to take tablets at
breakfast and bedtime - the pharmacy would cut and use two columns of
plastic and only have the plastic blisters in the Breakfast and Bedtime
columns... the lunch and dinner time columns would not have any plastic in
them. If the patient only needed to take tablets at breakfast and dinner,
then the plastic blisters would be placed in the breakfast and dinner columns,
while the lunch and bedtime columns would be empty.
On the inside of the cardboard, one of the sets of 28 holes is covered with
easy-to-punch foil. This seals the tablets into the blister pack while still
allowing the patient to get access to the medicines inside the blister pack.
It's easy to tell the top from the bottom of the blister pack... the holes have
been punched onto the cardboard in such a way as to give a narrow bottom
margin and a wide top margin. Also, the days of the week are printed along
the left hand edge of the cardboard, so the left margin is slightly wider than
the right margin.
Some blister packs have a front cover that can either open like a book or flip
up like a steno note pad. The choice of cover is pharmacy specific, and some
pharmacies choose not to order the front cover style.
yeah they do them at the pharmacy I go to but I've not seen them but thanks for giving a description of what they look like, smiles.
No, not because I wasn't about to read the package but because I am a damn skeptic and analyzer the information on the box wasn't sufficient for me. I wasn't certain with dayquill what one dose meant, two pills or only one. I under consumed for the longest time only swallowed one pill for a dose. I wouldn't believe anyone who said it was two.
Thanks Westcoast; better descrption than I could ever do. :)
Yep because I take so many tablets, each pack is quite deep.
A question. I've had a few prescriptions that come in blister packs. Any good way to open them without breaking the pills?
You should be able to just push them through the foil without breaking the
tablets... if breakage occurs, you could use your fingernail or even the tines of a
fork to break the foil and then use your finger to make the opening large
enough to get the tablets out.
The blister packs sound interesting, and a solution might depend on your resources.
I take eight pills each day, and another seven once a week.
I have a box that has 28 cubes in it: four by seven. The seven columns represent the days of the week, and the four rows represent morning, noon, supper, and bed time.
Once a week, my daughter fills my box for me.
The pills I take once a week, I keep and take those separately.
Now, all I have to do is to remember to take the little bastards.
Bob
I don't do well with the pill holders. I like to have everything close to me, especially the way I feel right now. But, I did have an incident, and it wasn't even my fault.
About ten years ago, this farmacy in Seattle gave me two strengths of my antidepressent. One was two of the small ones, but with the nerve damage in my hands, I cannot tell the difference sizes. These buggers were nearly the same size anyway. After two weeks, I was sick, nervous and very hyper. I went to my counselor and told her how I felt like tearing my hair out, after I'd betten several heads off, spitting them down the necks of the owners. Well, turned out I was taking four of the 150MG capsels. So, after solving that problem, they made sure I had enough medicine. I demanded all one size. All 75mg pills. Medicaid tried fighting and after I told someone there what happened, miraculously, shut up.
So, I did that with my tegratol as well, and now my pills are no trouble. Should it come up again, I will make sure all my pills are the same strength.
One more thing, I'm on a committee trying to force "all" pharmacies to get with the program on talking or otherwise accessible prescriptions. So, if you live in the state of washington, Email me if you are having trouble getting accessible prescriptions.
Thanks And God Bless and take care all!
Sarah or Hot Wheels.