Prescription day RA and Diabetes

This is day 1 #RABlog week. The day one prompt is:

A day (or an hour) in your life – Pick a day, an hour or half a day and tell us what happens? Are you stiff when you get up in the morning? Tell us about getting ready to go somewhere, or going to a restaurant. Pick any unit of time and tell us what your life consists of.

Prescription day

Monday is prescription day. I sort my pills for the week, check which ones need to be refilled, call the pharmacist and review my weekly schedule. It feels like a ridiculous Groundhog Day movie. It recurs every week like clockwork and with about the same cadence.

Get out the morning pill containers. Sort 7 days of pills, set aside the bottles for refills. Put away the morning set. Then repeat the same procedure for the evening pills. AM and PM pills have separate sides of the cabinet in my office. The most difficult thing about pill day is the recognition of what modern pharmacology has brought me. I can count on pills to keep my blood flowing, my cholesterol is in check, my blood pressure is near perfect, the nerves in my feet do not hurt near as much as they sued to and best of all, I pee sort of on cue. What more can a man ask for? Well time for one thing. I would like mine back. All this pill sorting and doctor calling is a lot.

Chronic disease

So how does one get to such a place? First, you have three chronic diseases. Each disease requires pills. Second find doctors who are not afraid to attack these diseases with all available means. Of course the plan includes a large amount of pills. Third see 13 doctors at least once annually. Seeing doctors is my hobby and I am good at it. I have figured out how to be slightly early for my appointment, I know the receptionist’s names, and I always try to make my next appointment before I leave the office. I know the medical assistants, the nurses and the phlebotomists. I call the pharmacist by name I know what their children are up to. What most people do not understand is the time it takes to have RA.

All of these connections and relationships are reflected back to me each week in the hour I spend sorting pills. During that hour I think of the appointments I have to reschedule, the prescriptions I need to renew, who I need to call and who owes me a call back. Sometimes I feel like a socialite checking off the medical professionals I mingle with. Each pill has a history, a future and as I drop them into my sort bin a present.

Sorting

It might sound like I enjoy pill hour each Monday. I do not. As I sort those pills, I think what my life has become. Right now I am taking 25 pills a day in 16 prescriptions. Honestly, I feel like my grandmother. When I was a child she took a few less pills each day and my parents used to say that pill A was fighting B to produce an unexpected result Y. But my doctors all tell me this is not true in my case. They reassure me I am on the bare minimum number of pills to keep things in check. But what I do not tell them is that I am so sick of taking pills I just about want to toss the whole thing out.

But then I remind myself what choice do I have? How long would I last without the blood pressure medication, methotrexate, or other immune suppressants? How far would I get without insulin and test strips? How long could I live if I stopped taking pills?

Not much different

I doubt I am not much different than most people with RA regarding my pill count. Because of the multiple diseases I may take few more pills than others, but I know most of us have a collection of doctors, pharmacists and pills to contend with.

So I sort my pills for the week. And each week I always return to one question? What am I doing for others that justifies this expense, effort, and time? I have found that pill hour goes better if I can tell myself I am helping others. This hour each week is a causality in the fight against RA. I pray someday we can stop the war, or at least reduce this causality.

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