Father has alzheimer's, tablet despensers, help needed....

readyletsgo

Ok, so my dad has alzheimers for a long while now but only getting tests etc done over the past 4 months (mri, brain tests, interviews etc), pretty hard at the moment but getting through it.

One major problem I/he has is taking his tablets each day, has been taking tablets for various things all his life but he just can not tell time, read time, draw a clock, tell what day it is, day or night. He has tablets to take once in the morning (6 of them) and then in the evening (4 different ones). But every morning and night its a battle to get him to take them or for him to remember if he has taken them or if he has taken them, maybe he has taken 2 doses from different days from the blister pack he gets from the chemist each week.

What I am looking for here, if anyone at all can help at all, is a daily tablet despenser, that just drops his tablets into a little bowl in the morning once, and then again in the evening at certain set times set by myself. Something that he can have on the wall or kitchen table so he just takes them but cant see the rest of the weeks tablets. and we know if he has taken them or not.

Can anyone recommend a machine that will do this easily without cost an arm and a leg, its getting very frustrating now.

Thank you for all your help!!!

r3nu4l

I'm not recommending any of these but have a look at these dispensers on Amazon.

If anyone here has bought them they will probably tell you soon enough if they are any good.

readyletsgo

Thanks, yeah I had a look at a few of them, they look way to complicated for him to use himself. He would take more than one amount of tablets or forget if he has taken them with somthing like those.

I need something that doesnt show any other tablets except the ones he has to take at that time of the morning or evening, No fancy buttons or timers on it, just a drop out into a little plastic bowl attacted to it. Very plan and basic but does everything underneath. I have a feeling this is going to be hard to find, cause the rest are just fancy blister packs showing all tablets when opened.

Sorry, just losing my mind with these tablets every day, getting a bit much now for such a simple thing.

westies4ever

my mum has alzheimers as well. her tablets come pre packaged in a dispenser - each has the day of the week and the time (am/pm) on them - can your pharmacist do anything for you?

hers kinda looks like this

http://www.google.ie/search?q=prepackaged+daily+pill+dispenser&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=qqEUUvvYO7DG7AaM34CYBw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=677#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=Dij5JerwqiW22M%3A%3B2Om0f1oA2WTu8M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.webstercare.com.au%252Fproducts%252FWebster-pak-tilted-(Custom).png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.webstercare.com.au%252Fproducts%252Fmulti-dose-webster-pak.asp%253Fsection%253Dca%3B255%3B311

readyletsgo

Yeah he gets a weekly bister pack from the chemist with all his tablets on show that he just cant get his head around for what day (mon thru sun) or time (morning/night), his brain just can not reg anything to do with time so he messes it up all the time unless he happens to be on the ball which is never too often or i am handing him his tablets.

I really dont know how to describe what i am looking for, but everything that has shown up online is a daily dispenser that shows the rest of his tablets for the week. I just want him to see the one batch of tablets he needs to take for that morning or night and doesnt show anything else. A machine, that runs on a battery, that only drops out the tablets that are due to be taken at a set time.

I might have to just invent what I'm looking for lol

westies4ever

readyletsgo wrote: »

Yeah he gets a weekly bister pack from the chemist with all his tablets on show that he just cant get his head around for what day (mon thru sun) or time (morning/night), his brain just can not reg anything to do with time so he messes it up all the time unless he happens to be on the ball which is never too often or i am handing him his tablets.

I really dont know how to describe what i am looking for, but everything that has shown up online is a daily dispenser that shows the rest of his tablets for the week. I just want him to see the one batch of tablets he needs to take for that morning or night and doesnt show anything else. A machine, that runs on a battery, that only drops out the tablets that are due to be taken at a set time.

I might have to just invent what I'm looking for lol

ah i get you now. thats hard to deal with. thankfully mum isnt so far along as yet. are you living at home? can you keep his tablets and dispense them to him for now til you find something or would that cause a battle?

wouldnt do any harm to chat to the gp or pharmacist and see if what you're looking for is available.

r3nu4l

I know what you mean now. You want something that you can fill at the start of the week, leave it on the wall and at preprogrammed times each day just drops the tablets into a bowl and maybe sounds an alarm to notify him.

I'll be honest and say that while that's a nice idea and such products probably do exist they may not be a whole lot of use for someone with Alzhimer's As I'm sure you know you could hand an Alzhimer's patient their tablets and talk to them while they are taking them and five minutes later they can come back to you in a state because they think they haven't taken their tablets. It's very sad and it's heartbreaking but they can sometimes even accuse you of having taken their tablets on them or may even forget who you are or that they even need tablets.

So even if you have a device that drops pills into a bowl and sounds an alarm a patient might even see it happening and it may not register with them that the event is anything to do with them. Then you can end up with a situation where the entire day's worth of tablets are dispensed into a bowl and in a moment of semi-lucidness the patient sees them, remembers that they need to take tablets and end up shovelling the whole lot into their mouths.

Long story short, Alzhimer's is not really the kind of disease where you can rely on the patient to manage their medication at all, especially as the disease progresses. You really do need you or someone else to ensure that those tablets are dispensed and taken at times, no matter how hard that is

readyletsgo

I get what you mean r3nu4l, and thanks for your advice!

He does have a HSE nurse that comes in the morning for an hour to wash him etc and to make sure he takes his morning tablets, but as of the past few weeks he gets up at 6/7am and confuses himself about his tablets and is onto me while I am running out the door to work each morning. In the evening I am there to make sure he takes them. But with this machine its more for me and the nurse each day to know if they are still there he hasnt taken them. Make life a tiny bit easier tbh.

His alzheimers isnt that bad yet where he wouldnt know what the tablets are at all, its just time has no meaning in his mind at all now. As i said, I am just learning all of this alzheimers stuff now, overwhelming in a way.

suds1984

Something like this maybe?

http://www.assistireland.ie/eng/Products_Directory/Healthcare_Products/Medication_Products/Medicine_Dispensers/PivoTell_Automatic_Pill_Dispenser.html

Otherwise it might just be a case of keeping the tablets of of reach of your father if has has someone to make sure he takes them in the morning and night.

Taltos

OP we are going through a similar hell like this at the moment.
We are using the weekly tray one - but like you being able to see the next day is just confusing and causing nothing but angst.

Some of what we have seen:
The doors torn off - not sure how that was done.
Wrong day regularly taken - not a big deal, I check them frequently and reset and as each day is the same it is not a problem.
Different days mixed together, again not an issue, just separate them.

Unfortunately she is taking two sets of tablets now, morning and night. While the nighttime one was just one tablet in a jar she was coping, but now with multiple all hell has broken loose and she can't cope with the morning ones either now.

All of the suggestions above while great I can totally see where you are coming from - way too complicated. What I had started to do was to leave the next day open but that isn't working either so hoping you find a solution here as I might just use it too.

Best of luck with your dad.

freshface2

You can't really rely on him remembering to take them.
He may start pretending to take them or take too much.
Someone else needs to be responsible to watch him taking them each day.

Ambersky

I think and in my experience the solution to the problem eventually is to forget any kind of dispenser to be used by the person suffering memory loss. Dates, times and the very sight of other tablets can be confusing as you have been saying readyletsgo.
You can get ones like these and if you leave a different section out morning and evening that may work.

Its all about calmness and establishing a routine I think. The person must not feel forced into something and if they feel a carers frustration they may interpret this as being forced into something and pull the other way instead of working with you.
If that dosent work someone with memory loss may need someone there to give the tablets, at the same time every day, twice a day if necessary. The tablets may then have to be put away in case the person gets anxious forgetting they took the tablets and looks for them. After a bit that routine is usually accepted and the person no longer feels a need to look for tablets and trusts and remembers that they will get them as part of the daily routine.
Sometimes in order for this not to become too big a responsibility on one person a rota can be set up for tablet giving but even then it is better to establish a routine with those people keeping to the same time of day each day.

MadsL

This do the job?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnqypcpXzuI

Ambersky

MadsL that machine looks really interesting and I am sure it would work for some people and maybe the OP's father.
The problem sometimes for people with short term memory loss is that they hear the message, phone call, advice to take a tablet, and they do get up to take the tablets. But on the way to do that they get distracted, or think of something else or pick up a piece of paper and put it away and forget the message they heard only a few seconds previous.

readyletsgo said
But every morning and night its a battle to get him to take them

If someone is a bit resistant to taking meds a machine reminder may also not work as well as a human offering and encouraging.
There is advice out there on dealing with and understanding resistance. Sometimes just understanding it can help you deal with it.
http://www.dementiatoday.com/caring-for-the-elderly-dealing-with-resistance/

This may not be the case with the OPs dad and the machine may work for him and it was exactly what he was asking for I think.
For some people in some situations that machine may be a godsend.

locum-motion

While the machine in MadsL's post certainly looks to fulfil the OP's needs, there are some issues that might not be immediately obvious.
Firstly, everything that Ambersky said.
Then there's some other issues:
How many of those little plastic cups that you saw coming out of the machine does it hold? Can it handle say 84 or 112 of them? (Ie four weeks supply x three or four times daily) Or does it just hold a week? Or a day?
Who's going to fill it? Is the OP going to open all his dad's meds and put them into the little plastic cups? Is the OP willing to accept the responsibility that doing it wrong might be dangerous to his dad? Does the OP have time to do it? And does he have the pharmaceutical knowledge to know which tablets are degraded by moisture in the air and therefore cannot be removed from their foil until they're about to be taken?
Or do you think the pharmacist will do it? Separate individual cups for every single time of administration? No way I'm doing it! Who's going to pay for my time to do that? What about labelling? When you get a prescription from the pharmacy, it has a label on it. By law, it has to have. Patient name, what it is and how many, when it was dispensed, instructions and cautionary warnings fir how to take it; all of these have to appear on the label. 56 little plastic pots for a twice daily medicine = 56 labels. What if there's 4 tablets in the pot? That's 224 labels. And that pot didn't look big enough to have 4 standard size prescription labels attached. So, then you're talking about new hardware, software and new non-standard consumables to allow the pharmacist to generate labels that will fit. Who's going to pay for all that?

Ken.

This might work, it might not. If you got the dispenser linked to by R3NU4L and somehow were able to block off all bar one slot at a time it might work. What I'm thinking is some sort of non-clear cling film that the op could peel off a section every morning.

It might work that if the op's father doesn't see anything other than one tray open for him he'll leave the others alone.

I hope this makes sense.

readyletsgo

Thank you for all your replies guys!

You see, my dads tablets are simple, 6 tablets in the morning all in one go, and then 4 in the evening all in one go, the HSE nurse is there in the morning to make sure he takes them and I am there in teh evening to make sure he takes them, now the problem is that in the morning, he might get up at 7am and try take his tablets himself which is grand, but 2 seconds after taking those tablets he forgets if he has taken them and goes back to the blister pack and the days listed on the blister pack become invisable to him and he opens another morning batch and 'might' take them. He did it yesterday morning and also last week, and now our doctor has said not to let this happen as they can casue a stroke if he 'OD's' on his tablets. We just have to watch his tablets like a hawk.

Now this is not time consuming but as you can imagine (and it might sound selfish) it takes up evenings every day of the week.

Latley if he has been taking the wrong day in the blister pack I just switch the tablets around and re-seal them with some tissue and selotape but he still manages to open them haha.

I dont know, he stresses himself out at the same time about the tablets, poor man. Like I'll give them to him, put them in his had, glass of water in the other and say now da get them tablets inta ya now, and start talking about something then a min later i have to remind him take the tablets cause he has forgetten even though they are in his hand, I am at the stage of to just put them in his mouth but hes not that bad, yet.


Argh, thanks for all your replies and help guys, its been very helpfull just to read others experience with a parent like thi. He really cant help it and he does appreciate everything i do, as he tells me :-)

/rant

OUTDOORLASS

Hi,
Sri, but there is really no easy answer to your problem. Things got so bad with our dad, that we had to make up a story that Mary Harney (at the time..) was only allowing tablets to be collected by the day from Chemists, once you were over 70 as some OAP.s were mishaldling their tabs. We could.nt leave the blister pack in the house. He had been taking 2 days, or none ...we.d find tabs on the ground, so we did.nt know what he was taking or not...and with the likes of aricept, it was vital that he was getting them. The management of hs tabs was extremely stressful for both him, and for us, the family. One sibling would literally hand them to him, see him take them. Dad could ring shortly after, extremely distressed, that he had been given no tabs that day. and would ring again, 5 mins later, and again, and again.... He would even ring the local chemist and abuse the Pharmacist (who thankfully was brilliant.....) Best of luck to u. The problem seems to be part of the progression of the disease. Best of luck.

OUTDOORLASS

Hi OP, I.v been thinking of your problem since I saw it. One thing we did, was consult with Dad.s GP and Consultant to see if all tablets could be taken in one go. He was on a big cocktail of tabs, including the Alz ones, anti depressants, heart tabs, tyroid tabs etc.
They had a look at it from a chemical/pharmalogical point of view, of what could be taken with what. They agreed that all tablets could be taken in one go. That meant that one of the family could literally hand Dad his tablets, chat/distract him whilst he took them. That way we were sure that all medication was taken. The only thing left to him, was his sleeper, which we left to him in one of the blister pack bubbles, left beside his bed, which he would see when he went to bed.
Best of luck.