About a week ago Steve (one of my fighters) shared with a story with our class about a really scary incident with his medication. I asked him to put it into writing so I could share it with my readers because it has a very important message. Here is Steve’s story:
“Hi Kimberly,
A few months ago I refilled my 90-day supply of PD prescriptions just before vacation travel.
During my travels, and in the following two months, my tremors increased. I was sad to see my PD worsen after getting such good initial results from starting my medication. When my pharmacy sent me the next refill alert for my meds, I took a close look at the bottle I had for the first time only to discover the dosage was 1/2 what my doctor had prescribed! Looking into the issue, I found my pharmacy had given me the old dosage my doctor had prescribed to introduce the meds into my system. The new prescription was correct, and my symptoms abated almost immediately once I began taking the correct dosage.
I am ultimately accountable for the medications I take, so I thought about the factors involved with this issue that I needed to address:
1) I did not verify the prescription I picked up. This is a big deal; I had become complacent!
2) Reviewing the issue with my pharmacy, I found they had several prescriptions on file for me that were no longer valid, I had them delete everything but the current prescriptions. Everybody should do this.
3) It is cost effective and convenient to get a 90-day supply, but the exposure to the wrong dosage would have been 30 days if I had not converted to the 90-day program. I am not going to change back to 30 days, but it does reinforce the importance of validating the prescriptions when I pick them up.
Lesson learned; I will not let this happen again! Rebel Fit Club fighter, Steve”
Another story of mixed up medications recently came from one of my personal training clients with Parkinson’s and vision problems. She called me several weeks in a row to cancel her training sessions because she was very sick and getting sicker. Even her doctor couldn’t figure out why she was so sick. I was really worried about her.
The mystery was solved when she was filling her weekly pill dispenser. She took a closer look at the bottles and discovered an old discontinued medication next to her current pills. You guessed it, she unknowingly took this old medication which was discontinued previously because she had a violent reaction to it.
Since she no longer drives and new to Oregon, she didn’t know how to dispose of the unused medication. She could have died as a result of taking them again.
Please be safe fighters! You can take all old medications to your local police station for safe disposal. To find a location near you, just do a Google search for “unwanted drug drop off” or “unwanted medication drop off” and include the name of your city.
Keep Fighting and don’t let PD define you!
– 💜 Coach Kimberly