My awsome screw-up

Ralph takes several medications as a result of his heart defect and diseased lungs. At one point he was taking six, seven if you count the home oxygen. At one time I needed a spreadsheet taped to the refrigerator to keep track of what to give him and when! Some every eight hours. Some every twelve. When Ralph was ill it was breathing treatments every four hours around the clock. That's fun.

We are so blessed by Ralph's cardiology team. His nurse practitioner is fantastic. It doesn't hurt that we run into her at the grocery store and ballpark from time to time! She trusts my mom intuition. I trust her experience. I have her phone number for any questions that come up, and they often do. How cool is that?

Over last weekend Ralph ran out of one medication. It's a dark glass bottle and it is hard to tell how much is left. No big deal, just call the pharmacy. No refills left. No unit dose - this means that they can't (won't?) give you enough to get through the weekend. And, they can't call the doctor until Monday.

I didn't worry too much because Ralph is on a real low dose and we were going to discontinue this medication next month anyway. Well the pharmacy didn't call me until yesterday to tell me that the medicine was ready to pick up. Four days after I called it in. Five days without it.

I thought about it and decided to call the nurse practitioner. I asked if we could just discontinue the medicine early and explained my mess. I was comfortable with it and...so was she! Woo-hoo!

Since Ralph has discontinued this medication he doesn't need the two others that go with it anymore! We just got rid of three medications in one fell swoop. That's an extra $60 in my pocket each month. I'm so tickled!

One left. Ralph has one medication that he is still taking. If things keep going well, we may be nixing it this summer. Wouldn't that be great?