SCD & Pain Meds #1: Managing Prescriptions

I recently read a post on the Sickle Cell Warrior facebook page. Since childhood, this person’s mother has always given him his pain medication when he needed it. Though he is now twenty-one years old, he and his mother follow this same pattern. Their main reason in doing this is to prevent addiction.

The problem is, if he’s having a crisis while his mother is at work, he has to wait for her to come home so she can get the medication from her hiding place. Obviously, this is an issue because he has to wait for his mom to get home, thus prolonging and increasing his pain. While I understand taking precautions to prevent addiction, I don’t understand the logic behind this methodology.

One Week’s Worth
Teaching your children to become independent adults responsible for their own health care needs, is vital. Parents, after all, won’t always be there and patients need to learn early on how to manage their own medicine. May I suggest a couple ways you can help your child take charge of this aspect of their health care?

Like many things, baby steps is often the best approach. Rather than just one day handing your adolescent an entire bottle of pain medication, give them a week’s worth of pills, or a few days. This will allow you to monitor how quickly he/she goes through their medication. As they demonstrate to you their responsibility to self-administer, increase the amount you allot them. In time, they will prove to you, and themselves, that they able to handle that part of their health care on their own.

Calendaring
One of the methods I use to monitor my pain medication intake is by calendaring out my medication. Long ago, I purchased a five week long pill container. As you can see from the photo, I have numbered one container for each day of the month. Each container has four slots to separate daily doses of medication.

When I get my pain medication refilled each month, I lay out all thirty-one containers, and put into each slot the proper number of pills I’m allowed to take each day; two pills from one prescription and one from the other.

By calendaring out my medication in this manner I don’t have to worry about: coming up short at the end of the month; going over my prescribed daily allotment of pills; or loosing all of medication.

This method has really helped me. Before I did this, there were times when I ran out of my medication before the month was over. This happened when my pain level was higher that month than the previous one. But since I began using this system, this hasn't been an issue.

The truth is, I don’t always have a need to take all fourteen pills that are prescribed me during a 24hr period. Other times, when a bad crisis has struck me, I have to use a little bit more than what is allotted me. By calendaring out my meds like this, I know when I can take a little more medication without risking coming up short or overdosing.