I had a great-aunt, Jean, who when I was growing up seemed to be about 100 years old. She was probably not even close, but since I had no living grandparents, to me, she was what aging was all about. And it was great. She was a sparkplug, as they said back then, and always had a quip ready. Most of them went over my head, though gales of adult laughter ringing through memory makes me think most of the jokes were “blue”. But she would always draw my attention, point her cane over to her medicine cabinet—with its seemingly hundreds of bottles of pills—tell me that she was starting her own drug store, and that if I knew any old people I should send them over. That always tickled me, and I was constantly in awe of how she could keep all these medicines straight.
It turned out, sadly, that she couldn’t. She refused help, and frequently forgot to take some of her medicine, or took the wrong kind, and quickly declined. My father never got over losing his oldest living relative to something as seemingly trivial as poor organization, and when he got older, he became a fanatic about medicine management. But even for him, it was difficult. He and my mom spent hours getting everything organized for the week, and were still always worried they had messed up.
That’s a fear for anyone who is a caregiver or has an aging loved one they are taking care of. Older adults are prescribed, and sometimes overprescribed, a lot of medicine. One recent study estimated that people between the ages of 65 and 79 received an average of 27 new prescriptions per year. If you can’t always be there—which is almost always the case—there is a real worry that pills will go untaken, or will be taken at the wrong time, or that too many will be ingested. The rise of medication management technology, though, which promises to be a powerful tool for organization, can help to ease worries while maintaining the health of our aging loved ones.
