Sunday, July 15, 2012

Drugs, Urine and Old People

One of the first things that I learned from B (my social work mentor), many years ago as an intern doing home care to geriatric patients was to avoid the soft furniture.  As recommended by B, whenever you do a home visit always shoot for the hard, wooden furniture.  It was advice well taken.  Two of my most prominent memories of from the experience was the smell of incontinence and the sight of an exploding medication stash.

Mick the Wonder Dog is now around 14 and sadly he has had a few "accidents" in the house.  Fortunately, as far as I know the humanoids of the house are still continent and, in my subjective opinion, have done a reasonably good job responding to Mick's accidents.  That was the good news...

While in bygone days, the "pill stash" consisted of prescribed medications, both the current ones as well as the ones that you never threw out; today's "pill stash" often reflects the hottest, make yourself healthy, natural remedies and vitamins.  What started off simple with one or two, has somehow reproduced like rabbits on Cialis.  This photo reflects my kitchen, "don't want to forget to take that" stash:

many bottles of pills

Yes, I should be running marathons with all this stuff.  It started off simple; oh, vitamin C will help with the common cold.  At one time I added vitamin E, too, but I no longer take that one.  Every educated person today knows that you need Omega 3s, so fish oil, check - got it.  Let's not forget the CoQ-10, which is essential to counteract the side effects of the prescribed cholesterol medication (statin).  I have a bit of seasonal depression so got to have the St. John's Wort plus add a bit of D3 for good measure.  But wait, I read that D3 by itself was no different in some study against a placebo... hmmm, what to do?  Good news, a new study, Calcium plus D3 seems to be better - oh yeah, a two-fer!  I was feeling a bit draggy in the morning so I thought maybe if I add some protein.  So I added the protein, but I think I might have a bit of milk intolerance... good thing I have the Ginger Root to settle down the stomach!  I've been under a bit of stress lately; good thing I watched a few minutes of Dr. Oz a few weeks ago - that and a few minutes on Amazon.com and I'm good to go with some Theanine... and just in case I missed anything, I have a multivitamin - "Alive!  Men's 50+" - it sounded good, but it seems way too strong - I split it in half and take it very sparingly.

The scary part is the stuff I just discussed is just the kitchen stash.  It does not includes all the over the counter (OTC) medications and other assorted pills stashed throughout 2.5 bathrooms...

so I wonder, are 30 somethings also taking these pills OR am I officially on my way to being "old people?"