Looking down at my handful of sanity tonight, I am once again amazed by the different colors and shapes of the various medications in my palm, and I wonder at the technology and the brilliant minds that brought them into existence.
Here is a dark blue capsule; it’s the antipsychotic, which for some reason costs less for 40 mg caps than it did for the 20 mg. About $50 less, which is a significant savings. I don’t think I’ll ever figure out what pharmacies are thinking when they set drug prices…..all I know is I appreciate spending less money and getting more bang for my 100+ bucks.
Here, too, are the two giant fish oil capsules which help keep my blood fats within acceptable levels; they’re a clear amber and really quite pretty, if a bit hard to swallow. The major side effect is the seal burp—a nasty phenomenon that accompanies the ingestion of said fish oil, which is rather unpleasant and causes my cats to circle around me and sniff my breath for half the night.
The round yellow pill is Klonopin, which I take only on the nights when I want to sleep and not be anxious the next day. Then come the five little white ones; the diamond-shaped one is metformin, which is the only thing I take for diabetes. There are also round ones of varying sizes; the largest and second-largest are blood-pressure meds, and then come the 1 1/2 tablets of my mood stabilizer and a 3 mg melatonin to seal the deal on sleep.
My daytime regimen is much simpler: another dose of mood stabilizer, a Vitamin D gelcap (is there anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest who’s NOT Vit. D deficient??), still another blood-pressure pill, and the oval, salmon-colored antidepressant. Make that one-half tab: I’m on a sub-therapeutic dose because my p-doc (psychiatrist) won’t let me increase it. Unfortunately, a therapeutic dose tends to throw me right into mania and he knows it, so I’m forced to cut these itty-bitty pills into two pieces.
I cursed him for almost a year over this. Every Sunday when I filled my med minder, I’d have to haul out the pill-splitter and try to get this slick, odd-shaped, elusive little sucker to fit into the mechanism. Every week, I’d chase them round and round the bathroom, split ’em into thirds instead of halves, crush a couple inadvertently, and swear horribly when I did it because he kept me on a VERY short leash with those; and if I tried to refill even a day too soon, I couldn’t get them until I was completely out.
And then, about a month ago, I accidentally discovered that they split beautifully when you hold them between your thumbs and index fingers and merely snap them in half. Who knew??
bpnurse 