Eventually, Francie became so overwhelmed she took a 5×7 card, wrote down the name of the medication, what it was for, and taped the pill next to the name. This system helped her fill the weekly/daily pill carriers and keep track of each individual medication, but the pill bottles, lotions, various paraphernalia, and mounds of medical documents started to take over her home.
She would take her mother to her brother’s house, who helped share in her care a few days a week, and the pill carrier, along with the pill description cards, came along too. The system became helpful when her mother or family members asked, “what’s this for?” It was right there on the card. Her creative sister-in-law took the cards a step further. Using poster board, she made an even larger pill identification board. It was easier to read, and Francie found herself taking it to doctor appointments. It also made filling the weekly pill carriers much easier, with less opportunity for error.
There were also piles of over-the-counter creams and pills for her mother’s neuropathy and digestive issues, a blood pressure monitor, vitamin supplements and more, the list kept growing! It was all an unorganized mess in her cupboards and on her counters, and no matter where she looked, Francie couldn’t find any type of cabinet or medicine management system on the market that could accommodate the ever-growing necessities required for home health care.
“I needed a solution,” Francie explains, “so I asked my friend Ed, an 87-year-old retired machinist, handy dandy man, jack of all trades, to make me a cabinet. I wanted a cabinet with six different color-coded bins and a door. I used the bins to arrange all the pill bottles according to the time of day they needed to be given, which coordinated with the pill identification board and finally! Everything was in one place!”
As the years went by Francie continued to care for her mother and made upgrades and additions to her “cabinet” as the need became apparent.
When her mother reached a stage in her advancing dementia where she was throwing things away, which included pill bottles from the cabinet, Francie asked her friend to make a cabinet with a locking door, problem solved.
On occasion Francie had to call 911, and when the paramedics arrived they asked for a list of her mother’s current medications and POLST form. Francie was always going to her files to retrieve these documents, when it dawned on her, “why not have these important documents in the cabinet for easy retrieval?”
After that she asked Ed to make her another cabinet, but this time she added two plastic pockets to the inside of the front door, one for the important documents and information, and another one to hold the daily/weekly pill carriers — assuring that everything was safe and secure. She also added locking spinner wheels, making it easy to move the cabinet from room-to-room.
Ed made 12 cabinets in all, each one adding and/or changing something until Francie was satisfied. She finally had everything she needed to manage her mother’s care all in one place. It was organized and transportable, locked and secure, medications were protected from damaging light and moisture, and she could easily retrieve medications and items needed for her mother’s care with ease. Sanity at last!
