Pill Minder Over Matter

Hello again, folks.  Craig Brewer again.  I’ll be you thought I had fallen off the end of the world or something, and maybe in some ways, that’s true.  Or perhaps you thought I had passed on.  Well, as Mark Twain said, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Not to say I don’t ail a bit from this or that now and then.  Like most of us who have been around for at least a half century, the various and sundry practitioners of the medical arts with whom I have had the dubious honor of consulting on a regular basis have provided me with plenty of placebos and claimed cures I must ingest on a daily basis.

Now, here’s the problem.  I always seem to be in a hurry, and I never like to take time to set up my pill minder—you know, those little clear plastic things that have a compartment for every day of the week.  Invariably, I will be short on time, or perhaps ready to climb into the sack, and my pill minder will be devoid of drugs.  What to do?  There’s not much you can do, other than filling up a whole passel of pill minders, but then you run the risk of some doctor changing your dosages, and you have to go back and sort the whole thing out again.  Or maybe you just want to carry one pill minder on your trip, but your trip will last a whole week, and if you use the pills from one compartment, you’ll end up short.

I can’t offer you a magic solution, but here’s what I do: I make my pill minder work for eight days, adding 14% to the length of time it works for me.  After filling it seven times, I’ve made it last for eight weeks.  I don’t have to fill it quite so often, so I have fewer frustrations with it.

“How does he do it?” You might ask.  I’ll bet most of you have figured it out already.  If you’re reading this, I already know you’re smart.  It’s purdy simple, actually.  Do you have some of those little paper bathroom cups?  Set one down at the end of your pill minder when you’re charging it with capsules, and instead of picking up seven pills, get eight.  Drop the last one—or the first one; it doesn’t matter—into the cup.  Do the same with the rest of your meds.  When you’re finished, close all the little compartments, dump the pills from the cup into your hand, fill the cup with water, and swallow the pills (assuming it’s the right time for them, of course!).  Now you’ve taken your pills for the day, you still have a completely full pill minder.  On top of all that, the process didn’t add any inconvenience to your day whatsoever.

There.  That’s my two pills—er, bits.