Up until I retired we both took a handful of pills in the morning and another handful after dinner in the evening. (Often just before bed)
A new problem…
When we started traveling taking care of our parents it became apparent that we needed to put more effort into it. The problem was, it was quite difficult to get a refill if we were not in Atlanta.
We tried using the computer to keep track of all the medications. What doctor, how many we had in hand etc. That got to be a HUGE amount of work every three months.
The first solution, weekly pill trays.
We bought two 7 day pill trays to put our medications in. But almost immediately we realized that on the 7th day we had the same problem of no pills in hand. I forfeited my tray so that she could use two trays and keep 7 days in the arrears. That worked pretty well until she didn’t fill the 2nd tray, and we were back to no pills in hand.
The first pill carrousel dispenser $175.00
Life Fine 28 slot Wi-Fi enabled pill dispenser with a DC-DC inverter for power.
In Jan 2024 I bought my first carrousel from Amazon, it was a hefty purchase. But if the carrousel did its job, it would be worth every penny. The Wi-Fi part enabled supervision and remote control of the dispenser if I got one for my mother in Florida. (With my sister’s approval.) 28 slots allowed us to store two weeks in the dispenser, and we could refill it before it got half empty. It was a pain keeping it plugged in, but we had other USB devices at the kitchen table anyway.
Since her tray worked out so well, I bought three more dispensers so we both had more than two weeks in hand. (Only two of them were powered, the other two were just holding spare pills.)
A crisis with Invisalign trays.
She started complaining about a toothache on Friday afternoon and it was too late to get into the dentist. We drove to a Doc-In-Box urgent care and got some antibiotics and pain meds. Monday the dentist pulled the tooth and wanted to pull a 2nd tooth, but we refused the request. (Another story) We had to take antibiotics and pain meds that had random times during the day. I tried creating paper schedules and documentation, but that was almost impossible to keep up with.
With four trays now powered up and online. I could space out all the medications (Including Pain meds) so that her three trays would notify us when to take all of them at the proper time. That turned out to be a life saver. They also would tell our cell phones when the medication was actually taken.
Now that the crisis is over, we bought six obsolete trays on EBAY for storage. It was actually cheaper to purchase the whole dispenser than just the tray!
For pain medications the primary risk is an overdose where we’d take 1000mg of acetaminophen or 800mg of Ibuprofen and forgot we took it.
Pulled all the pain medications from the other trays to put in this new battery powered dispenser. I set the timer to dispense every three hours, and I cut the 500mg acetaminophen tablets in half. (A lot of times 250mg is plenty.)
It will rotate, flash green and dispense every three hours. 2x 250mg Acetaminophen and 1x Ibuprofen tablet in only three of every four slots.
Recommended no more than 4000mg Acetaminophen in 24 hours (500mg 8 times a day or 3 hrs.) Recommended no more than 1200mg of Ibuprofen in 24 hours. (200mg 6 times a day)
Traveling and missing medications.
When we go to any appointment we have to consider what medications we’re going to take before we leave, while we’re gone and when we return. The trays are too cumbersome and have to be consistently powered or they will burn through the batteries.
We bought these folding pill trays to take with us. Most of the time, we’ve still missed taking them on time because we don’t have the trays to remind us.
Now we have these alarm devices on our wrists to remind us.
They vibrate soundly to notify us to take the medications when we are away from the dispensers.
We also have a box with all our medications for 24 hours if something bad happens.
Reset her carousels to 2x and 3x per day after removing the pain meds.
3x per day is nine days for 28 slots, so we’ll just leave the eight extra slots empty to stay on a weekly schedule. 2x per day works out to 14 days, which means we fill it every other week which is ok too. Mine is still 4x and seven days since I only am using one dispenser.
Final Comments
These dispensers do have a couple of faults. First, since they rotate you cannot have two dispensing times close together or the pills will move away from the door. If the dispensing times are closer than two hours, you need to alternate trays so that the medicine can always be taken. The firmware on the old ones cannot be upgraded, that’s a security risk for anything attached to the same Wi-Fi. I sent an E-Mail to the marketing company and they responded that there’s nothing I can do. They also said that there’s no risk with the firmware, I don’t believe that for a second. I do have them on their own VPN to keep the traffic off my network. The functionality of the trays is dependent on the version of firmware, so all of the ones above work a little differently. (I only use the three dispensers that have the latest firmware.) Her two dispensers have the same firmware as the $175 one from Amazon. Mine is a bit older and doesn’t flash red like hers does. Some of these dispensers are like 4 years or older. The dispensers don’t like to be right next to each other. They will ignore configuration changes if they are close together. All of them show that the batteries need to be replaced and they have new batteries. An alarm will sound if the Wi-Fi to the phone faulters, it also is annoying to have this LOUD and repeating alarm saying to take your medication even on the quietest setting. It turns out that we can hear the pill tray rotate from across the house most of the time, that’s enough for us.