A Tip for Remembering to Take Medication

Last spring, one of my children was diagnosed with a condition that requires medication three times daily.

It was a shock to us, partially because of the life change that comes with dealing with a chronic condition, but partly because I’m not exactly the best at remembering medication. Any prescription that’s supposed to take 10 days to complete will surely go at least two weeks. I’ve hung signs all over the house in neon colors, but alas, my Selective Vision prevents me from seeing them.

The newness of the diagnosis and hope for recovery helped us stay on track in the first few months. In the summer, it was a little easier because we had the three doses coincide with meal times. (And mostly we did better because my hubby gets to come home for lunch in the summer, and he is so much better at remembering things like this than I am.)

But when school started, we had a very difficult time remembering the after-school dose. And since there have to be at least three hours between doses, we found ourselves waking up a rock-hard-sleeper almost every night to give him a third dose before we went to bed.

Soooo, remembering an article I read in Family Fun Magazine once about how a family used an alarm clock to help them know when they had 10 minutes left before it was time to leave for school, I had an idea.

I bought an alarm clock and set it for 15 minutes after school gets out. Most days, it starts going off as we walk in the door. My son knows to take his medicine, and then flip the switch off, and immediately back on, so it will go off the next day at the same time. This way, if we do something after school, getting us out of routine and making remembering that much harder, we are reminded the minute we get home. And if he goes somewhere with a friend, the alarm going off reminds me to reset it for the time when he’s supposed to get home.

So simple. Sooooo needed around here.

And by the way, I just wanted to thank those of you who were readers at the time of his diagnosis. It was such a rough time and I felt like life as I knew it would never be the same. I poured out my frustrations in a post, and then was finally able to find the release of tears that I needed when I read all of your encouraging and understanding comments. It was a defining moment for me as a blogger. It showed me that there really is genuine community and friendship and caring out here in my cyberspace life.

And in case you’re wondering, this “new normal” that you all spoke of is totally fine with us, because the medicine is working! Praise God!