Whether it’s something as mundane as the flu or as serious as pneumonia, you will be required to take some sort of medication to be able to counter the effects and stay healthy. Simple ailments generally don’t require too much, but chronic conditions will almost always put you on a lifelong dependency on pills. It is very important for you to manage you medication properly to avoid an overdose or missing one altogether.
Planning and timing your doses
Get yourself a medicine organizer and use it to plan your entire medication for a daily or weekly basis to avoid double dozes. Take out some time at the beginning of the week so you can do this properly and carefully. To make things even easier:
- Keep the medicine organizer at a place that’s easy to see
- Try taking your dozes at the same time
- Try picking a time for your dozes when you’re at home; that way you wouldn’t have to carry the organizer with yourself unnecessarily
When traveling
Taking a break from your routine to an exotic destination is no excuse to take a break from your medication as well. Where you go, your medicines follow!
- Put a reminder on your luggage reminding you to carry your medicine organizer before you leave home. And obviously… don’t forget to pick it up on your way out!
- Make sure that you have enough medication to last you through your trip well in advance.
- In case you’re traveling on an airplane, stash your medication in your carry on so it’s easily accessible in the case of urgency.
Side-effects
Psychiatric medication often comes with its set of side-effects. Though these normally dissipate within two weeks of starting a course, some can linger on and become quite problematic giving rise to other medical conditions.
When and if you start experiencing unwarranted side-effects, don’t stop your medication or adjust your dosage by your own judgment. There is typically more than one medicine that can be used to treat a particular medical condition. Consult your physician and pharmacist for an alternate.
Withdrawal
Most patients tend to stop their medication the moment they start feeling better without realizing that the goal of psychiatric medication is not just to make you feel better, but it is to make you remain feeling better. Always consult your doctor before you let go of your medication. Managing your medicines is not something people enjoy but one must realize that one has to take care of oneself since this gradually increasing velocity of life has eradicated the caring emotion from the society leaving Every Man for Himself.
