Keeping Track While Taking Medication

BySusan August 3, 2012February 3, 2022

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I am finally back to feeling “normal” after a six-week bout with poison ivy. I realize that on the scale of health issues, poison ivy is not very impressive. But I now know that I am highly allergic to that evil plant, as 6 weeks of misery for me and my family has proven.

I ended up taking prednisone for almost 4 weeks. The first prescription wasn’t enough, so I had to go on prednisone a second time. Did I say how very allergic I am to poison ivy? (it pains my pride to admit I can be brought so low by a puny plant.) The second prednisone prescription was 3 tablets/day for 5 days, 2 tablets/day for 5 days and 1 tablet/day for 5 days. In the beginning, I felt so terrible I could barely remember if I’d taken my medication let alone how many days I’d been taking it. Later as I felt better, it was easy to forget how many tablets I was supposed to take. I’d had similar difficulty keeping track of medication when my children had to take changing dosages of a prescription. Those times I’d been healthy and in control. It was easy to check the calendar and figure out what day and what dosage we were on. This time, however, since I was ill, I had a much harder time keeping track of the dosage.

But having gone through two prescriptions with ever-changing dosages in less than a month, I figured out an easy way to keep track of where I was in the course of taking the medication.

an arrow pointing to marks made on a prescription medicine bottle

Each day I made a hash mark on the bottle when I took my medication. That way I could keep track of how many days I’d been taking it and whether I was on day 5 of 3 tablets or day 1 of 2 tablets. Interestingly, you can see how shaking the first hash marks (the ones at the bottom of the bottle) are and how steady the later hash marks are. I hope to never take medication again. But that’s probably not realistic, so next time I’ll do a better job of keeping track of taking medication for myself or for my children.

Susan

I’m a mom of 3, a veteran and military spouse. I’ve moved into 20+ homes all around the world. My passion is helping busy people make the space and time for what’s really important to them.