Red Light/Green Light

In the past couple of years, I have been taking more prescription medications than I took in all the years previously. They all come from the pharmacy in the same brown plastic container, and it's challenging to decipher which bottle has which medication. I take one strong drug that could be dangerous if I took too many, but it looks just like all the other bottles, so I have to decipher a dozen different small-print labels to find the meds I need.

I sent a message to the Food and Drug Administration to suggest that prescription bottles could be color-coded. A RED bottle would mean danger: the prescription could be lethal, such as oxycodon. A YELLOW bottle would indicate caution as the drug is not immediately dangerous, but could be if too many pills are taken, such as sleeping medication. A GREEN bottle would indicate that it's a non-lethal, non-habit-forming prescription, such as a supplement. This is the new age of prescription medication and, as we age, it becomes easier to confuse one's self about which prescriptions to take when, and which ones are which when all the bottles look the same.

My mother used to confuse her pills all the time because she had dementia and could not remember whether she had taken them. It didn't matter that they were all organized in one of the multi-day/week organizers as she had no idea what day it was, nor whether she'd already taken her meds. When she stayed with me, I had to hide her meds to keep her from re-dosing herself. A close friend also created a medical emergency when she did the same thing with her meds. She lives in a residential facility that closely monitors her medications so there is not a repeat of the incident.

Just as the hospital prepares medication in small paper cups, it would be helpful if combination medications were packaged together, using rice paper, so the patient could pick up one packet, rather than fumbling with loose pills. The rice paper dissolves on the tongue with no unpleasant taste to it, but adds a level of safety that could prevent either an accidental over-dose or the loss of needed medication if it falls from the patient's hands.