Category: Health and Wellness
so I was wondering. as a blind person, it's hard for me to be able to get my perscriptions filled without having a sighted person's assistance. How are you able to call in your perscriptions? do you use a sighted person to help you check how many you have in the bottle and whether or not you have enough? I'm trying to find some way to manage my own medication without having to ask for a sighted person's help. let me know
You can always get someone sighted to help you from the off set and write down the perscription number. Usually once you are associated with a farmacy you can call them on the phone and speak to someone at the farcacy and give them the pill by name and you name because it is in the system, and check around. Many places will have a farmacy that delivers one or two days a week, but you have to shope around first.
Um, I'm confused. Which parts of managing your prescriptions are you having trouble with? I'm totally blind, and have always managed my prescriptions independently. There's no reason we as blind people can't count the number of pills in a bottle. And, if you don't have the RX number, a pharmacy can look it up with your name and birth date, and sometimes your phone number. Some pharmacies also do online refills. Now, going to get the prescriptions could be another matter. Some pharmacies deliver. Otherwise, public transit or cabs can be used to go pick up your prescriptions.
I have a Kroger within walking distance and use their pharmacy. I either ask them what the prescription number is when picking it up and use that to re-order, or I call a pharmacist and have them look up the information. I ask the doctor for the length of the prescription and verify that and the name of the drug with the pharmacist to make sure I'm getting the right thing in the right quantity. They make these little plastic things with little covered slots, one for each day, which you can use for holding pills. These can be useful for making sure that you've actually taken whatever it is for the day. If I'm getting multiple prescriptions I can tell which is which either through differences in the pills or by bringing labels, asking the pharmacist which is which, and labeling the packaging in some way. Hope this helps. Feel free to ask more questions.
I'm on prescribed medication, but it comes in boxes of two blister packs of 14 tablets in each pack and I'm normally just taking two tablets a day, so I just work my way down the rows of tablets, normally three to a row from the top left to the bottom righthand corners of the packs. If I was taking say, 2 antibiotic tablets, also in blister packs 3 or 4 times a day, I use the same system until the course is finished. If the tablets came in a bottle, I'd just memorise how many per day, open the bottle up and extract a tablet when it was time to take one. As for managing my prescriptions, I either get a sighted person for example, my mum to go in to Boots the chemist or wherever to sign for and collect my prescriptions, but if for any reason, I went in on my own, I'd ask at the counter whether they had it in and sign for it myself. In the UK, if you are Visually Impaired or disabled, you don't have to pay for prescriptions.
Jen.