Tuesday, March 8, 2016

I'm not being a good patient

I try to be a good patient. I really do. I know my health is complicated and the best I can do is be the good patient to help my medical team keep me feeling okay.

What is a good patient? They are the people who actually show up on time for doctor appointments, basically follow doctor instructions, and take their medications.

I have one area where I am falling apart - managing my prescriptions. Since we moved, my little system for remembering to refill prescriptions has fallen apart. Normally what I do is fill our pill boxes once a week. When I go through all our prescription bottles, I pull out any that need to be filled before filling our boxes the following week to make sure we do not run out.And that hasn't been working.

Several times now I do my little weekly routine and pull out the prescriptions need to be filled. Then my system fails. I then seem to ignore the empty bottles waiting to be refilled. I have no idea how I manage to do that each week.

Last week I went to refill my husband's prescription to find out that the preapproval hadn't been done because we forgot to make sure the doctor's office did. He had two switches in doctors recently which may have caused the lapse but that left me standing at the pharmacy and eventually paying full price for his meds.

This week I went to fill my pill boxes with my synthetic thyroid meds and I have none. NONE! I don't even have a refill I can get filled today. I have to call my doctor's office and beg to get my refill in today. I can go without this for one day.... and it does have an impact on how I am feeling.

I forgot another one a few weeks ago as well. I think I need a new system. In the meantime I am not a good patient.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi there!

My name is Julie Schaeffer and I’m a freelance writer for Healthline.com. I’d love to include a few brief comments from you in an article I’m currently working on. The article will offer motivating or inspiring words of wisdom to people affected by metastatic breast cancer—from people who are going through it themselves.

If interested, please email me at julie@jshealthwriter.com and we can discuss specifics.

Thank you for sharing your story with so many!

Julie

—-
Julie Schaeffer
Freelance Writer/Editor
Allentown, Pennsylvania

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