My mom called me crying recently. She’s 68 years old, overweight, inactive, and suffers from a litany of “old-age ailments” including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, borderline diabetes, arthritis, and hearing and vision limitations. Her situation probably sounds familiar to a lot of baby boomers and their kids.
Every Sunday evening, she loads her four-by-seven pill case with her 12 prescription medications, three vitamins, and two over-the-counter pain relievers. She can’t remember or even pronounce the names of most of these pills. She can barely recall which are for her heart and which are for her joints. Sometimes she skips taking her pills altogether. She figures if she’s feeling good, why mess with it? My mom is not alone.
This is also a Sunday evening task for me, too. Doesn't reduce me to tears exactly, but it does give me lots to think about. I love what people are working on—a centralized database for tracking medications, better storage methods, better ways to track your medications, and more.