A step-by-step guide to living with diabetes
Wednesday 8am
Take last Rosiglitazone tablet. Make mental note that will need to open new packet tomorrow.
Thursday 8am
New packet of Rosiglitazone tablets not where expected to be. Look in all obvious places. Draw blank.
Thursday 10am
Try to decide whether feeling odd because am anticipating feeling odd, or because am under-medded.
Thursday noon
Am due to collect next cart-load of meds Saturday morning. Ponder whether can manage without Rosiglitazone until then. Reason that it is much smaller than Metformin tablets and probably therefore less important. Fail to recognise either terrifying faultiness of reasoning or fact that is clearly indicative of raised blood sugar levels.
Thursday 2.30 pm
Can no longer pretend am feeling exactly well. Phone pharmacy. Arrange to pick up emergency supply of five tablets first thing in morning.
Friday 9 am
Arrive at pharmacy. To surprise, am able to pick up entire prescription. Am asked whether small, proffered bag contains everything. Point out that take nine separate scripts and that meds therefore usually arrive in large carrier bag. Pharmacist phones GP's surgery. GP's receptionist admits that only first page of script handed to pharmacist's driver earlier in week. Pharmacist confirms with receptionist that am nevertheless permitted to take everything on both pages. Pharmacist fills script. Try to explain that getting meds two days early will still mean dearth of Rosiglitazone at end of four week period but am by now too peculiar to make sense of response.
Stump off to bus stop. Once on bus, search feverishly through carrier bag for Rosiglitazone. Fail to find it. Panic. Envisage own imminent death.
Search carrier bag more slowly. Find Rosiglitazone at very bottom. Take tablet. Think might live after all.
Friday 9.50 am
Amaze friends and colleagues with immense size of four-week drug stash. Wittily declare, "I told you I was ill".
Sunday 8am
Find missing tablets in kitchen sink under washing-up bowl. Berate self mightily. Tell Pop. Am berated mightily by Pop. Hang head in shame.
Take last Rosiglitazone tablet. Make mental note that will need to open new packet tomorrow.
Thursday 8am
New packet of Rosiglitazone tablets not where expected to be. Look in all obvious places. Draw blank.
Thursday 10am
Try to decide whether feeling odd because am anticipating feeling odd, or because am under-medded.
Thursday noon
Am due to collect next cart-load of meds Saturday morning. Ponder whether can manage without Rosiglitazone until then. Reason that it is much smaller than Metformin tablets and probably therefore less important. Fail to recognise either terrifying faultiness of reasoning or fact that is clearly indicative of raised blood sugar levels.
Thursday 2.30 pm
Can no longer pretend am feeling exactly well. Phone pharmacy. Arrange to pick up emergency supply of five tablets first thing in morning.
Friday 9 am
Arrive at pharmacy. To surprise, am able to pick up entire prescription. Am asked whether small, proffered bag contains everything. Point out that take nine separate scripts and that meds therefore usually arrive in large carrier bag. Pharmacist phones GP's surgery. GP's receptionist admits that only first page of script handed to pharmacist's driver earlier in week. Pharmacist confirms with receptionist that am nevertheless permitted to take everything on both pages. Pharmacist fills script. Try to explain that getting meds two days early will still mean dearth of Rosiglitazone at end of four week period but am by now too peculiar to make sense of response.
Stump off to bus stop. Once on bus, search feverishly through carrier bag for Rosiglitazone. Fail to find it. Panic. Envisage own imminent death.
Search carrier bag more slowly. Find Rosiglitazone at very bottom. Take tablet. Think might live after all.
Friday 9.50 am
Amaze friends and colleagues with immense size of four-week drug stash. Wittily declare, "I told you I was ill".
Sunday 8am
Find missing tablets in kitchen sink under washing-up bowl. Berate self mightily. Tell Pop. Am berated mightily by Pop. Hang head in shame.
The Editor
posted by
Lady Bracknell | Wednesday, April 08, 2009
6 Comments:
Almost been there, almost done that. But could never have told it so well. Thanks for another super post.
(PS Good job you don't live this side of the Mersey. No way the pharmacist will amend prescription - to correct it -without revised piece of paper signed by God and at least two angels. And why is there never an angel around when you need one?)
I do have a particularly good pharmacist, I know, and have had cause to be grateful for that fact on more than one occasion.
What's so frightening about elevated sugar levels is just how very quickly they affect the capacity for logical thought. It seemd genuinely reasonable to me at the time to assume that one tablet must be less important than the other just because it is smaller.
A salutary lesson.
A lot of pharmacists are lovely (I know, 'cos me ma is one) and having worked in a pharmacy as a summer job when 16-18, I can confirm that the story of not all of the prescriptions necessarily being passed onto the pharmacy isn't that unusual.
In their defence, Doctors' receptionists handle so many scripts [prescriptions] that it's virtually impossible to get everything right, but this is of course no help to the individual concerned, and frequently it's no help to the pharmacy staff who are the ones who get it in the neck for not giving people their 'whole prescription' because we've given what the doctor has actually put on the form, not what they thought the doctor had put on the form.
Sorry, rant over now. But you tell the story so well Lady B, I couldn't help but get caught up in it.
Don't know if it would help you, but we have a 'medicine cabinet' kind of affair (well, a high up kitchen shelf which serves as same) where we keep medicines, rather than scattering them randomly about the house and hiding them under things. This makes the medicines easier to find when we want some. You might find it helpful to adopt a similar scheme, or at very least, to stop hiding criticial medicines.
You wound me with your implication that I squirrel meds away in bizarre locations, sirrah!
I'm not that stupid.
What I am, however, is old enough to completely fail to remember that I have heard meds falling into sink and made mental note to retrieve them the moment I have a hand free.
Wait until you're pushing 50 - then you'll understand.
Oh, and I would never rant at my pharmacy staff. Not even when my sugar levels are all to pot.
When I'm tired (and sometimes when I'm not) I have the attention span of an unusually short-lived and feckless fruit fly.
Not only do I forget to take meds, but I forget where I put them and can't remember if I have, in fact, taken them already and forgotten.
For this reason, once a week The Hon carefully places the medicines in containers labelled 'Monday a.m.', 'Monday lunch', etc.
Sad, isn't it :)
Lady B, it really was wrong of me to imply you were stupid. You are not, of course, stupid. You are lovely. I however, am sarcastic.
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