Over the Counter Meds

My father has a cold. There is an over the counter cold medicine that works for him, but getting it to him is an event.

The assisted living place he lives in has an in-house med staff that comes complete with a pharmacy. The pharmacy isn’t in-house, but it’s contracted some how so they always go through the same place. Residents are not allowed to keep non-prescribed medication in their rooms. Prescribed medications are kept in a safe so the nursing staff can distribute it when appropriate.

So for over the counter meds, they can’t keep them in their rooms without a prescription, and you aren’t going to get a prescription for that sort of thing so… what?

The what is simple. We bring it to him. He takes two doses of this specific med each day. Morning and night. So one of us brings him each dose. On Friday my sister in law brought him both doses. Saturday was my sister. Yesterday was me. Today I brought him the morning dose and my sister will bring him the evening dose. He asked if we could leave him his evening dose yesterday while we were over there for Easter lunch, but that would break the rules and we don’t want to break the rules. We’re good citizens. They take care of my dad, I don’t want to thumb my nose at them.

The downside for today was that I overslept a little. I was planning to get up at 5:00am, get my exercise in, have some water, have some breakfast, maybe watch a Star Wars: Rebels episode or two, then go to his place (leaving insanely early because the morning rush hour might make my 20 minute drive more like 60 minutes) with enough time to get there and back by 9:00am so I can punch in to work on time.

Today though, dumb ass over here slept until 6:00am and then took forever to get into gear and just skipped the whole exercise and breakfast and water thing. I had a protein bar in the car on the way over there. That passed for breakfast. I was able to get my exercise in during my lunch break, which was not ideal but got the job done.

Tomorrow I need to get up on time so I don’t throw off my routine. Wednesday is an in the office day so I won’t have time to deliver the meds. My brother in law will handle it on Wednesday. After that, will he still have a cold? I don’t know. We’ll find out. The moral of the story though is don’t over sleep, dumb ass.