Did I take my meds??

   I often find myself asking this question. Let me explain. When you have a chronic medical condition, it can require taking your meds every day at the same time, or even more than once a day. Mine happens to be twice a day, which means every 12 hours.

   Sometimes, the time for meds comes and goes, and I really can't remember whether I took them or not! This just happened today, so it's on my mind. I swear, I think I took them around 10 or 10:30. But it's almost 12 now, and I don't remember if I really did take them or not.  Its really strange; it gets to be routine, you don't even think about it. That is why I usually try to take special notice of the time, for instance, or something else to remind me. If I forget, I can take a few breaths and usually tell: if I can breathe, it means I took them.

   Most of the time, Hubs is there, and I can ask him if I took them. Today, he's already gone to bed, and I really don't want to wake him up just to ask him that. He tends to be cranky under those kind of conditions. For some reason, today I can't tell just by breathing, whether or not I actually took my meds.

   I took my pills, possibly for the second time. I stopped myself just before I took the inhalers. I am not sure what could happen if I take my meds twice. It could be bad. And I certainly don't want to over medicate myself!

  This seems to happen mostly on days when I have no plans, nothing to do. Like today. And since I will not be terribly active today, it's not a problem if I didn't take them. When I am more active, it becomes clear pretty quickly if I forgot to take my meds. After all, breathing is not optional.

   It's now just past 5 p.m. When I woke Hubs up, I remembered to ask him about my meds. He says that I didn't take them. I told him I thought I took them after he went in to go to bed. He says he heard me coughing, but not the cough I usually get from the inhalers. I can now pretty much tell that I didn't in fact take my inhalers this morning. It's harder to breathe that it should be. 

   Like I said earlier, I'm supposed to take the inhalers twice a day. Since I have been out of work, I've only been taking them once a day, in the mornings. I am sleeping at night now, not working, so I don't need them as much. If, in fact, it gets too hard to breathe tonight, then I will do them, but I usually just do them in the morning. If I forget, it can usually wait until the next day.
  
   I am currently taking two pills, once a day, and the two inhalers. It used to be three pills, but my doctor and I discussed it, and decided to stop taking the third one. It was pretty expensive, and I wasn't really sure it was helping. We decided I should try not taking it for a while, and if I discovered I needed it, I could call him. So far, so good. I haven't noticed a big difference without it.

   My favorite part of the day is about 10 to 20 minutes after I inhale my meds, I can feel my lung capacity increasing, and it gets easier to breathe. I always say "AAHHH, breathing is good!"