THE MEDICINE "CABINET"

I thought all bathrooms came with medicine cabinets but apparently that isn't always the case.  Neither of my bathrooms in my Florida condo have a medicine cabinet. When I had my Florida house none of those bathrooms had medicine cabinets either.  Maybe it's a Florida thing ?  I know when I lived in NY all the bathrooms had medicine cabinets and even our small RV has one.  

My question is . . .  do you keep MEDICINE in your medicine cabinet ?  

I know that here in Michigan the medicine cabinet in the bathroom is just like the rest of the house.  It is filled with an assortment of things, none of which could be considered medicine.  There are tubes of ointment, jars of creams, vials of oils and several old tooth brushes and razors.  Not a single bottle containing medicine of any kind.  

Which leads us to the question . . .  Where does The Man keep his medicine ?

And that is a question that prompts me to write a blog on this very subject.  Because anyone with such severe COPD has GOT to be on a LOT of medications! So if that's the case just where are they hiding?

Every Saturday morning I come out to the kitchen table with my little black bag of pills.  I should not make fun of The Man and his medicine because I am on a bunch of crap myself.  You know that if there is a medicine out there that will relieve a symptom I am going to take it.  Except for Statins.  I will NOT go on medication for my "high" cholesterol because the doctors played that trick on me years ago when they said my Thyroid was not working properly so I needed medication for that. Looking back I really did not need to go on any thyroid medication at that time because the number were borderline but thanks to the drug companies peddling their wares all the doctors jumped on that band wagon and prescribed thyroid medicine for all their patients.  Now it is cholesterol medication if your numbers are just slightly above normal.  

So . . . back to the kitchen table on Saturday morning.   I have one of those wonderful little pill boxes with the days of the week on each compartment.  I sit down at the table, open my bag of pills and one by one fill all the little compartments for the entire week. I can see if I have forgotten to take meds and I can be sure that I will not overdose. Great invention !  It takes me about five minutes to get all the pills done and then I'm on my way to my next adventure.  

THE MAN . . . . . . . .   Holy Crap !  So he is taking maybe five different pills on a daily basis.  That's really not bad in my book but you would think he was climbing Mt. Everest when it comes Saturday morning and time to fill his little weekly pill container.  But then I guess if I had pills stashed ALL over the house it would be a much more difficult task than taking five small bottles out of a bag.   

Yes, he has pills and inhalers in drawers, cabinets, closets and suitcases.  I honestly don't know WHY this is the case because as I have said he only takes five different pills.  I think the fact that he gets all his medications delivered to the house from the VA at a moments notice just makes it too easy. The Man can make an automated phone call on Monday and by Tuesday afternoon his medication will be in the mail box.  (This fact that the government CAN actually do something quickly blows my mind.)  But on the flip side of that there really doesn't ever seem to be an occasion where the VA will say, "Hey Dwayne, you just ordered three hundred Valium four days ago. Do you REALLY need more right now?" In stead he just picks up the phone and orders pills easier than ordering pizza.  So because he can order pills just about any time he has a "stash" of medications "Just in Case".  

In our bedroom there are two dressers.  I have ONE DRAWER in the dresser next to my side of the bed. All the remaining FIVE drawers are filled with pills and inhalers of various types.  In the second bedroom where I DO have a whole dresser to myself, (except for the top drawer that still contains some of his wife's scarves), there is a second dresser were two of the three drawers are filled with oxygen hoses of different lengths.  (If the local fire department ever needs spare hoses we can supply them for a year.)  

We're just getting started.  In the laundry room there is a "linen" closet that contains some linen but one of the shelves in that closet contains boxes of rubber gloves and bandages. (I assume leftover from when his wife was ill.). Moving on into the kitchen two of the five cabinets hold assorted bottles of pills. I think this is the dwelling place of the "active" medications that he is currently taking but since they are scattered amidst coffee cups and drinking glasses I really can't be sure just what is in there.  There are also some pill bottles standing on the small butcher block that is next to where he sits at the kitchen table. He seems to use those bottles the most often although I can't really be sure of that.  I know that these butcher block pills are the ones that sometimes need to be cut in half which causes him all sorts of aggravation. (He has at least three pill cutters that the VA has given him.). 

So come Saturday morning and time to fill the weeks pill holder I bring out my little black bag of pills and The Man ventures off on his weekly scavenger hunt. How he knows where anything is I don't know. There will be weeks where he will have forgotten to take a particular pill because he didn't remember to take it out of the drawer/dresser/closet/cabinet.  I have tried on occasion to suggest that he keep ALL his medications in ONE  place but this idea is met with distain. He knows where everything is ! His "system"  works just fine!   

I can tell you one thing for sure though . . .   There is no medicine in the medicine cabinet !