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On Stay Safe Rx you will find current events and resources advocating for safe prescription labeling practices. When patients struggle to see, read or understand their prescription labels they are more likely to take the wrong medication, take it improperly, or not take it at all. Pharmacies can make prescription labels more accessible by incorporating dual-language, audible, large print, Braille, plain language, and user-friendly designs. Check out the resources in the side bar to assist your own advocacy efforts or browse through posts to see what others are working on or have achieved.

A SPOONFUL OF HUMOR HELPS THE MEDICINE GO DOWN

Janet dressed in red and her husband in a tux with red bow tie stand in front of a heart.  Roses boarder the photograph

By Janet Di Nola Parmerter

Originally published in the Georgia Council of the Blind, 2020 Winter newsletter.  Reprinted with permission of the author.

For sighted people, the simple task of taking medicine involves nothing more than reading the label, checking the number of pills needed, filling a glass with water, and swallowing the medicine. In contrast, for blind or partially sighted individuals like me, the same task presents a variety of frustrating problems.

Where in the world did, I put that medicine bottle? What new innovative child-proof way has the pharmaceutical company invented to stop me from opening this bottle? With so many items in the medicine chest, which bottle is this one, and was I supposed to take these pills once or twice a day? Then when I finally found the right bottle, I wondered, , how many of these tiny things do I take right now?

Using our minds and common sense, I’m sure many of us discovered ingenious ways of solving such medication problems, Yet some of those tested ideas may have failed or even had a disastrous outcome. Therefore, before I tell you the best solution, I found for safely taking medication, I’ll share one of my more unsuccessful humorous, yet disastrous pill stories.

Being a European travel tour guide, I had packing down to a science. Many items which traveled overseas with me never return home.  In other words, with the intent of having more room to buy things, I packed items to be thrown away or used up before I repack for home. Then, there was always extra room to pack any of those so called, ‘treasures I just couldn’t live without’.

For a few years, one thing I did to save space (that is until it almost killed me) was pack a daily number of vitamins and medicine into tiny disposable zip lock bags. As for my medicine, I counted out the pills for each day I would be gone and added a couple extra pills if the flight home should be delayed. For each of the two prescriptions, I put 25 pills into each baggie, and for the vitamins, methodically, I took one tablet from all twelve bottles and dropped them together into the 23 baggies laid out for my three weeks away. Thus, I did not need to carry fourteen bottles to, and from HOME, so my suitcase HAD extra room for gifts. Wasn’t I clever? At least I thought I was, but, as it turned out, I wasn’t so clever after all.

Here's why. The first night of my three-week job in Italy. After various cross Atlantic flights to Rome, I greeted all clients from different airlines and gathered all the luggage and passengers onto the Mercedes tour coach and headed south.

The breathtaking drive along the Amalfi Coast brought everyone to a spectacular cliff hanging hotel. Though it was a long drive, everyone was excited but exhausted from the jet lagged. Still, we arrived just in time for the normal dinner time seating at 7:30 PM.

In most Italian hotels, dining room waiters do not begin serving a tour group until everyone is present and seated. For that reason, I asked the passengers not to wait for their luggage to be delivered to their room, but just drop off their carry-ons, wash up and then go directly to the dining area to enjoy the breath-taking sunset. As for me, I quickly touched up my makeup, filled up a glass with mineral water, and since my vitamins were in my carry-on, I took out one vitamin pack, swallowed a handful of vitamins and rushed to dinner.

Later, during my little, ‘welcome to Italy’ orientation, my stomach felt a bit queasy. Usually, because I sleep the entire flight, I don’t have jetlag, but I wondered if this was an exception to that rule. After all, for me, I was still on New Jersey time, so, it was actually 3:30 in the morning.

By the time I returned to the room, I collapsed on the bed with gripping stomach cramps, began moaning and wondered what was happening. While in the fetal position, my confused mind reviewed the day’s program, what I had eaten, what I had to drink and what I could have done wrong. Could it have been my vitamins? Perhaps, could my mistake have been the fact I took ALL TWELVE vitamins on an empty stomach?

The more I thought about THE vitamins, the more I didn’t remember THEM feeling different shapes and sizes. Immediately I opened my eyes and mentally relived the experience of swallowing the vitamins. In a second, I jumped off the bed, opened the pill case, counted 24 of the 25 bags, and all but one baggie felt like they were different sizes and different shapes. Yes, all but one bag.

Terrified, I thought, oh my goodness, I couldn’t have done that! So, one by one, I closely felt each bag then placed it to my right. Could this be true? Was there only ONE bag instead of two in which everything inside felt exactly the same size? Yes, there was only one instead of the two medicine bags. Oh no! That meant before dinner, instead of my vitamins, I had taken all 25 pills in one of the two medicine bags, a full three-week dosage of medicine all at once. Tears filled my eyes, I began to sweat and instantly felt worse than I did before.

What did I take? Was it the Levothyroxine or the Nexium? If I opened the package, I was sure I could feel the difference. As soon as I opened the medicine pack, yes, I definitely felt the difference and the package of Nexium was missing.

Four o’clock in the morning, my groggy husband Keith answered the phone to a hysterical, crying wife.

“Keith, Keith,” I screamed, “You have to call poison control and ask them what I should do?”  Trying to wake up and get the full story, my confused husband yawned, then calmly asked,

“Janet, stop crying and tell me, what you should do about what?” 

“About what? About what? I poisoned myself”, and continued crying. After I sobbed through the whole story, I begged Keith to call the 24-hour poison control hot-line.

In retrospect, that must have been a pretty funny conversation as they probably suspected Keith tried to kill his wife. Keith phoned me back in frustration and said,

“I called the number and told the lady I wanted to have information on poisoning.” She asked what information. Then, I asked, ‘If my wife took a whole bottle of medicine, what should I do?’ The lady asked, ‘Can I speak with your wife?’ I said, ‘No, not now.’ She asked me why not, and I told her, ‘Because she’s not here.’ She asked me where you were and I said, ‘In Italy.’ Then, she asked me if I was calling from Italy and I said, ‘No, New Jersey.’ The lady sounded like she was getting mad then asked, ‘Then how do you know she is poisoned if you are not with her?’ I told her because you phoned me, so I needed to know if you would be ok. Finally, she asked me what you took, and I couldn’t remember so I just hung up on her.”

At that hour in the morning, my poor sleep deprived husband couldn’t function, so, by the time Keith finished his story, I was laughing so hard, I forgot how awful I felt. Quite frankly I’m surprised the police didn’t show up at his door to search the house.

Fortunately, as I hung up, I remembered at dinner hearing one of my 49 passengers say she was a nurse, then Immediately phoned her room and explained my foolish actions. In a minute she was at my bedside, took my vitals and assured me what I took was not fatal. That alone dropped my blood pressure about 100 millimeters, but the most amazing part was, for the past ten years she worked in a gastroenterologist office. Not only did she know everything about what I had taken, but she knew exactly how I was feeling at that time, what I should do at once and how uncomfortable I was going to feel the next day. With her help, advice, cups of olive oil, and gallons and gallons of mineral water, I survived that very uncomfortable, difficult, and stressful situation. However, from that frightening experience, I learned two very valuable lessons.

First, I learned I should never take my medicine out of its original bottle, and second, I learned using “ScripTalk” to read my prescription bottles could one day save my life.

In the beginning of this article, I planned to tell you the best news ever, so here is the information. Many pharmacies throughout the US use ScripTalk, so we can manage all our prescriptions, and personally, I no longer have worries (that is,  at least with taking the wrong medicine).

Now, since my dear husband has developed Alzheimer’s, I not only have to manage my own medicine, but in addition, all six different medicines he takes each day.  I keep them locked up in a toolbox with my ScripTalk and put them in a day-by-day month container.

So, here is the whole scoop about the fabulous ScripTalk Station. It is a free, on loan, accessible prescription reading device which allows print challenged individuals to manage their own medications without guesswork, or the need of a sighted person. Special labels incorporate radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, which store prescription data encoded by a participating pharmacy. A rice sized chip is affixed onto the bottom of their normal prescription bottle, then, after ScripTalk Reader scans the label, it announces the medication name, dosage, refill date and other important information.

The pharmacy provides this free service and En-Vision America will loan you their ScripTalk reader, which comes with a Power Adapter, two AA batteries and a practice pill bottle.

Documentation for the ScripTalk Station is available in braille, large print, audio CD and a fully accessible PDF manual which can be downloaded from http://www.envisionamerica.com/files/scriptalk/Station_Users_Guide_1.3.pdf .

To find out if your pharmacy participates in ScripTalk, call En-Vision America at 800-890-1180 or go to, https://www.envisionamerica.com/products/scriptability/participating-pharmacies/

In addition, ScripTalk Mobile app is available on Android and iOS iPhone 7 and higher. For the iOS download visit https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scriptalk-mobile/id1317698388 .

For Android, go to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mistral.scriptalkmobilev2 

So dear friends, my advice to all of you is stay safe, happy, healthy and stay alive with ScripTalk! 😊