aag

No polka injury, but I have an old poker injury. Wait, check that… it’s a poke HER injury.

Well worth it.

The alternative is overdosing, like say taking 3 doses of Lortab after a surgery because you were left alone and in your pain induced fog kept forgetting you took your meds. So you took them again, and again… It didn’t hurt anymore, I can tell you that. All day it didn’t hurt! But neither did anything else. TV looked wierd too.

your unfortunate forgetfulness is caused by the back pains… I`m even half your age and those things happen to me because I’ve had back problems for so long…

I want to hear the story about the polka injury! Joking aside(i still want to hear the story) I woke up Friday morning barely able to walk from back pain. I must of slept wrong or something but its still haunting me. Pills are our friends!

I was being called the absent minded professor by 6th grade and it hasn’t gotten better with age and the swiss cheese in the gray matter inducing effect Prozac has had on my ability to remember nouns. (there is an actual disorder where people have difficulty processing nouns, but I can’t remember the noun for that disorder…

I was 35 before I found out that I had ADHD. Try remembering whether or not you took the Ritalin that helps you stay organized and remember what you have and haven’t done today, and need to.

I had to break down at 40 and buy one of those too. Now I just need to remember to fill it : )

I have to admit that I have - and use - two of those containers (one for morning pills and one for evening pills). It’s been brilliant. Appalling when I look at how many different medications I’m on, but it means I don’t miss any.

Pain sucks - I’m sorry to have to deal with it as well.

xx Dee

Sorry….I just read the comment about forgetting nouns. I think I have that. Seriously. I forget very simple ones…can picture them…but the word for them is just gone till I do a word association thing in my head to remember the name of what I am thinking of.

Do you exercise? No, not THAT sort of exercise, I know you do that! Try ‘Nia’ it’s all about finding pleasure in the movements by listening to your body…..ahhhh, now you’re a bit more interested. I’ll tell you more if you you’re interested.

Better than the OD alternative, though. You’re not the only one who uses them at 40ish, don’t worry about that. Besides, at least 20 odd years ago, didn’t birth-control pills come with a dispenser that filled the same function? So, even the teen/twenty/thirties need help on the pill-taking-memory sometimes!

It starts with pain; if I ache before I’ve even gotten out of bed I know that the day is bound to be impossible.

Know that feeling all too well. And with children about, you can’t take something and go back to sleep (that would be nirvana for you, I bet) with the hope that the pain will be gone when you wake up.

I think this time of year is hellish for anyone dealing with arthritis simply because the Christmas cookies, the stollen, and the cheese-based dips and the alcohol have the refined flour, sugar and fat content that makes the inflammation and pain so much worse.

As for the little pastel plastic box for your meds — it should be marketed along with a t-shirt with this pithy saying: I have a mind like a steel whatchamacallit.

Happy New Year, AAG, and I raise my glass of water to pour a libation to the gods of pain-free days.

Btw, was that injury suffered while engaged in naked polka dancing?

I live the alternative. I use two of those damn boxes - one for morning and one for night and I take too damn many pills. My father is 84 and takes fewer pills than me. So, I can so understand where you’re coming from and, you’re right, it sucks.

BTW, my wife has an old bowling injury. She tore a muscle in her butt 5 years ago and still hobbles on it once in awhile.

Oops. gotta go, time to take my morning pills.

‘Tis parenthood what’s stealing your mind. I know because it stole mine too.

I take two pills a day; I take them at night to ensure that I take them. Somehow that seems to work for me. Days are too hectic to remember — especially mornings.

Not to turn this into a big medical post, but I am 38 and have similar problems. I went to see a rheumatologist and they put me on low dose (25mg) amitriptyline for chronic pain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitriptyline

Using a 1-10 pain scale, it knocked my daily pain from a 5 to 1. I am also on a similar NSAID. It makes the daily routine much easier, I take it at night and it helps me sleep as well.

Good luck!

Oh my god, I thought I was the only one under 80 who can’t remember if I took my medication or not. High blood pressure - it got so bad one of the girls I work with went out and came back with one of those dreaded boxes.

I’m better now. Just the threat of that thing whipped me into shape though I still have mornings where I’m just not sure.

In the immortal words of the Stones, “what a drag it is getting old.”

And polka injury. Ha. That was my laugh o’the day. Thanks.

Yeah, I use one of those, too.

And like you, I had chronic pain that didn’t respond well to pain meds.

I also had depression.

Cymbalta (a combination pain med/antidepressant), combined with an anti-inflammatory has done wonders for me. I can use my treadmill again, and I can wake up without pain.

Miraculous.

I made you a nice comment but you eated it. :-(

Or at least your spam blocker did.

New blog name: I Can Has Comment?

embarrassing is not taking your pills.

coping with it? no matter HOW lame it makes you feel? that’s anything but embarrassing.

by the way noun folks, it’s a known thing for women in their forties to lose their nouns. do crosswords.

Polka injury? I can certainly relate–I have a nagging theater injury… no joke! :)

I, on the other hand *would* like to turn this into a medical discussion of back pain. Is the pain high (mid-thorax), low (lumbar), radiating down the leg (i.e. sciatic), pelvic (i.e., sacroiliac), or what?

Back pain is the most tricky and often mis-diagnosed ailment around. The family docs routinely call it a “muscle strain”, which is BS (muscles ache, they don’t normally give you those kinds of sharp pains) just to get you out of the clinic because they don’t know what to do and it takes too long and too much expertise to address properly. Chiropractors want it to be a simple mechanical issue that needs to be “adjusted” three times a week for the next 20 years, neurosurgeons don’t understand the mechanics, and orthopedic surgeons want to do fusions because that’s where the big money is.

You really need a very good orthopedist who is honest enough not to be eager to operate, tied to a very good radiologist who can see the nuances and has experience with both sacroiliac and lateral recess stenosis issues as well as the usual lumbar disc stuff, and/or maybe a PM&R person who actually likes patients.

But don’t just rely on a family practice person who hands you a pill. There is a mechanical issue- a nerve being impinged somewhere- and there is an answer.

A lot of drug stores hand out those pill organizers for free. I know CVS does because I have two for all my meds and I’m 22! But IBS and chronic migraines will do that to you.

You really need a very good orthopedist …tied to a very good radiologist who has experience…and/or maybe a PM&R person…

Quickly skimming through the comments, I misread this as the ideal composition for a group sex session. :-o

Not what ContrarianSkeptic had in mind, nor you, who understandably yearns for solitude.

do you really notice the absence of celexa that quickly?

i am on prozac (baby steps!) to combat PMDD and i can miss one or two - not fantastic to do to my body in the long run, but it doesn’t stop me from functioning, either. maybe try an antidepressant with a longer half-life, if they have one for your particular needs?

I forced myself to buy…I tried to forget…when she was eighty…

It’s not age.
It’s not incompetence.
It’s just the human condition.

We are all descended from the people who were the BEST at hunting and gathering on the African savanna 100,000 years ago. Remembering whether you took a pill last night conferred no selective advantage in that environment. So none of us are very good at it.

More specifically, we remember things that have emotional significance, and forget things that don’t. The vast majority of our day-to-day routine is unemotional, and slips away within a few hours or days. (Put the other way round, emotions are a mechanism used by the brain to decide what to remember and what to forget.)

Some years back there was a TV commercial that played on this. It showed shots of family members being asked what they had for dinner the night before last, and–of course–no one could remember. The ad was supposed to make the hapless housewife feel unappreciated for all the hard work she did cooking dinner, with the promise that if she would just buy product X, then they would remember.

I have a child on meds,
and I use a pill box to manage his pills for him,
because he certainly can’t do it himself,
and I can’t do it, either, without a mechanical aid.

Sad, isn’t it.

Just shy of 20-years-old, I was a fully-certified paramedic — rather a protegé, really.

And I would ask what some old person was taking, and they would return with:

“I takes my heart pill, my liver pill, my blood pill, my sugar pill, my OTHER heart pill, my pressure pill….”

And I would have to count out the names of likely candidates and see if they would twig …

It was horribly frustrating.

I seem to be slowly becoming one of them *recoiling in horror*

I know the names of ALL of my medications. Thank you very much :o)