Taking My Pills on Time

[jesse_the_k]

My medication alarm system combines a very low tech device—a four chamber pill box—with my iPhone’s system alarms. I set a daily repeating alarm labelled with the pill chamber number.

The key innovation is that, instead of a built-in alarm, I use a song. Sometimes it takes me a while to reach my pillbox—the length of the song doesn’t let the task slip from my mind. (It also is less annoying than a repetitive ding dong!) If I don’t snooze the song, iOS repeats it at least three times — fifteen minutes of "Take your pills, already!"

I choose instrumental songs, so as not to impose my lyric tastes on random strangers. I switch to different songs every season, since I can become ear blind to the same tune after too many repetitions.

My pharmacy sold me this 85 cm x 35 cm x 25 cm4-chamber pillbox in rigid plastic. Each chamber has a hinged lid, labelled in braille. There’s a lock on the end that my arthritic fingers have no trouble releasing.

And of course there’s one more set of pills I have to take as I climb in to bed—that pillbox rests on my phone charger, which so far has been a foolproof reminder since I don’t want my baby brain to go unfed overnight.

What's your system like?

Comments

[j00j]

Most of my pills are morning, so a consistent location for my pill box plus alarms (particularly on the weekend when I'm more likely to be off schedule) does the trick for me. Bedside pillbox for allergy pills during the time of year (most of it now, annoyingly) that I'm taking an extra at night.

I'm using the iOS reminders for my rotating cast of topicals (I've got one that's daily, one that's 2x/week, another different one that's 2x/week...). I can remember I need a topical as part of my bedtime routine but not which ones, so the reminders show me WTF I'm supposed to be using, because I can't put goo in a pill box.

Okay now I'm imagining

[jesse_the_k]

a lovely snail-form container which dispenses goo by rolling across your skin.