Here is a funny concept...Before Transplant, protect your liver at all costs by not taking ANY drugs including, caffeine, cold medicines, anything over the counter, any herbs, etc. The only thing I took was my diaretics and a multi-vitamin.NOW, I have a brand new healthy liver and I take 14 different kinds of meds, 22 pills a day. Some before meals, some after, some on an empty stomach some, etc. etc. The trickiest one is one of my antirejection drugs. Prograf. Which I can't eat 2 hours before or one hour after. It makes it tricky if you forget and eat something...
Oh, and I have to take them with me everywhere I go because you never know when you might get stuck somewhere because of weather, an accident, a change of plans, anything unexpected.... YOU HAVE TO HAVE YOUR ANTIREJECTION DRUGS..... or you can loose your liver.....Not a good thing....So, have a back up plan...
But this is the reason for this post. I will talk more about the drugs later but I discovered a couple of great websites for tracking and reminding you to take your pills....and they are FREE..
This one...MyMedShchedule.com is from the Transplant Experience. You enter your meds into a data base and it will create different schedules for you...even a weekly one where you can track all your daily vital signs if you are tracking those and one for your wallet to put next to your emergency info. It will send you text messages or e-mail reminders also....great for those mid day meds. Another thing I like about this is that particularly with transplant they adjust your meds according to your labs once or twice a week in the first few months of transplant and it is really easy to go online and adjust your doses, add and subtract drugs as they change and also just print out a recent copy to take to all your appt's so when they ask what you are taking...Which they do every time!.... You can just hand them a piece of paper....!!
Another one is packmups.com which are little zip lock pouches to fill like your pill containers without the bulk. I think they would be good if you organize pills for others also. I am going to try them.
This one isn't free but I am impressed with the options for reminders. Great for palm pilot, blackberry, internet users who would like reminders... ontimerx.com
These of course would work for any kinds of meds...not just transplant. If you try them give me some feedback!
