Current medicines

At some point, not too many years ago, the only medicine I took every day was Claritin, for allergies. Oh boy, has that changed.

I present to you, my daily meds:

[Image description: Six pills, in three groups of two, and two bottles, one small, the other larger.]

Daily Meds--6 pills, two bottles

These medicines include: an antihistamine (since my allergies never went away) and omeprazole, an antacid, in the morning, to be taken well before food; piroxicam, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or NSAID, and Flintstones multivitamins to be taken with food, usually at lunch but sometimes earlier; an eyedrop bottle, which I use maybe once a week; a nasal spray, which I use right before bed; and amitriptylene, which I try to take around 10pm because it makes waking up difficult.

Random details: 1) The nasal spray comes from a different supplier than my last bottle of this particular prescription, and this stuff fucking burns. I stand there for about a minute after using it just holding my nose while the sensation fades.  2) If you are ever tempted to buy the CVS version of the Flintstones complete, don't. It tastes like chalk and is nasty. I bought two bottles when they had a sale, because those two were cheaper than ONE of the Flintstones. I doubt I'll ever finish them. I ended up buying Flintstones after all; those ones I actually look forward to eating because they're yummy (made for kids, you know). 3) Amitriptylene is extremely soporific. The longer I stay awake after taking it, the harder it is to wake up in the morning because I haven't had a full night's sleep. That is, the effect is exaggerated with the addition of the medicine. Also? I wouldn't recommend trying to walk if you've taken a dose and are already extremely tired and are up late. I was not at my most graceful last night. At least I didn't walk into anything? I was definitely weaving and having to rebalance a lot.

Moving on, on any given day I might add tylenol/acetaminophen (but never advil/ibuprofen as it's another NSAID and can't be taken in conjunction with piroxicam/feldene) if I have a headache or if bodily pains aren't quite under control.

However, I also caught a cold recently. It started with a sore throat last Friday afternoon, and by Monday the sore throat was gone but was replaced with general stuffiness and the beginnings of a cough. As a result, I've been taking these as well:

[Image description: A box of Mucinex, three cough drops, and 5 little sample packets.]

Cold Meds--cough drops, tylenol, decongestants, mucinex

The health center has a lot of free samples they give out, usually in the form of a "cold care pack" unless asked for something specific. This includes medi-phenyl aka phenylephrine, tylenol, and cough drops. I've been using everything but the Tylenol. I've also been coughing enough that I wanted to get something specifically for a cough. This afternoon I called the health center to ask for cough medicine, and after a bit of back and forth involving the nurse and the nurse practitioner looking up drug interactions, they determined that the best thing would be Mucinex. Apparently there's a "class D" (don't ask; I don't know) warning against taking anything DM with amitriptylene--something about the drugs being too similar. As a result, they told me not to take Robitussin DM, which is what I would normally take for a cough. They also offered to refill an inhaler they gave me last year when I got sick, but my lungs don't feel "tight" this time as they did last time, so I declined. (The tightness was "something like bronchitis; apparently the bronchial tubes weren't expanding enough to allow me to breathe. That was fun when I went in a hot, glass building for a meeting...ended up wheezing in the hallway and having my class dean and half a dozen other people very concerned about me.)

At any rate, those are the medicines I'm on at the moment. My apologies for the lack of prettiness on the shots; it's way too late to have natural light and the only lights I have in my room create shadows of various kinds, which was making the whole thing look kinda bad to me.

I'm up to six pills a day (+ another 10 or so until this cold is over). I wonder how many more I'll have to add before the year is out?

Edited to add a 3) to the random thoughts list.