Organizing Medicines For Older Parents

As you may have seen by now, my dad recently had a big open heart surgery and is now recovering. Mom lived with us for almost 6 weeks while Dad was in the hospital or rehab center. When Dad got out of the rehab center, it was quite overwhelming for him and Mom to think about tending to all that needed to be done when they went home on their own.

Dad has always been very capable and hard working, but the surgery has taken a lot out of him. He should recover much more yet, but the transition from being in rehab to going to live at their home without full time help was a bit daunting.... even Dad's voice is weak right now whereas it used to be very strong... he is just quite weak even though he is improving.

He was put on many medicines, and there was concern about keeping them all straight... and he was very overwhelmed with it. To make things easier for him, I used markers and put a colored circle on the medicine bottle.... the orange circle means morning and the blue one means evening..... then I wrote the number he takes at those times...... IN the circle. It made it really easy to see at a glance what he needed to take.

I also made a "key" for it.... listing the medicines he takes in the morning and those for the evening. The ones that are PRN, or "as needed" are marked with yellow.... and on the list I circled the bottom one on the morning and evening list to also show that they are also "as needed". That didn't show up here and when I tried to "fix" it with the paint program, I made it worse, so what you see here is not as clear as Dad's copy is.


 Dad has been so pleased with this...... and said it has simplified things for him a lot. If they lived closer, I would have offered to put his meds in a divided container, but since they live several hours away, he had to be able to do it and understand it. There are better systems, but this works.... and I was pleased to get it done... as I was so tired and my brother and sister in law were picking Mom and Dad up the next morning.

Sometimes, I am surprised how things that we take for granted as being "easy", are actually becoming more complicated for Mom and Dad and it is a good idea to help them.  On a future post, I plan to share the system we came up with to continue their therapy exercises.... it is work, but so helpful... and what a blessing that we can help our aging parents.

Thank you for visiting.... if you have aging parents who are needing help, it can be rather difficult... especially if they don't realize they need some help and you don't want to step in where you are not needed/wanted. It is a dilemma, but though our world looks with scorn on the older generation, God doesn't and it can be a blessing to help our parents... even if it is difficult.

 "The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness." Proverbs 16:31


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