Pillbox
Thanks to some videogames I played as a kid, ‘pillbox’ to me is—first and foremost—the defensive structure built to fight in wars; those little concrete structures with small windows you can fire guns out of.Thanks to the powers that be, pillboxes are also, well, those little plastic boxes people can use to put their pills in so that it’s easy to remember what pills one has to take.
Pills, and pillboxes, have become a bit of a warzone in my parents’ house.
My mom has anywhere between fifteen to twenty pills to take on any given day. Most are over-the-counter stuff; stuff like vitamins, fish oils, etc., all with varying degrees of scientific backing. Things that I’m sure my mom randomly heard one day, five years ago, were the cure-all, or was somehow absolutely necessary to take as you aged.Others, are prescriptions. These are a bit more serious.
I’m not very good at keeping track of pills myself. I can barely remember to take a daily vitamin, and will only remember to take antibiotics because, goddammit, I hate feeling sick.
I cannot imagine taking twenty different pills. Forget helping somebody else, take twenty pills.
To make matters worse, my mom has devised this complex system for remember which pills to take. If she needs to take them first thing in the morning, or at night, she puts the prescription bottle in the bathroom. If it’s a vitamin or some other supplement, she puts it in one of two of her very old-looking pillboxes. Except of course, for one random prescription that helps control her blood pressure. That goes in the pillbox. I don’t know why. She doesn’t know why.
She can’t explain why the other prescriptions that also need to be taken once a day, belong in the kitchen next to the phone.
“Why don’t you just put these, in the pillbox too?” I asked multiple times.
“No…” she always said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Common sense. The most misnamed word in English.
I’d explain the three or four other exceptions to these rules, but the reality is, I don’t remember them.
We started arguing about this multiple times, over the course of several months because the more I started tracking her medications, the more I realized she was messing one or two of them up.
I came up with a solution: Just put everything in the pillboxes. Done. Easy.
She didn’t believe me.
“No…” she said, as always. “Just let me do it myself.”
“That clearly doesn’t work.”
“No…you’re just trying to control me.”
“Then you provide a solution.”
“I want to do it my way. It is easier, okay?”
“That’s not one of the options.”
Repeat.
Recently, I took my mom to see a doctor, who suggested to my mom that she allow me to help her come up with a simpler system, that uses one pillbox. A large one, maybe colored, with both am and pm sections.
The moment we get home, my mom argues with me.
“You don’t need to listen to the doctor,” she suggests to me, actually suggests to me.
I ask her, if when I was a kid, and a doctor told her she needed to do something to take care of me, and I told her she could ignore it, if she would listen to me, or listen to the doctor.
I don’t know that that’s the right approach but I’m tired of caring at the moment.
“Listen to the doctor,” she admits.
“So what do you think I should do?” I challenge her.
We have a moment of silence when we get home and I don’t want to press it. I no longer have the energy for this.
But my mom doesn’t seem notice.
“It’s okay, Daniel. I know what the doctor wants, but you don’t have to do it,” she tries, again.
I sigh. “And what does the doctor want?”
“For you to take over my medicine and control it.”
“Nope,” I declare, and I’m not even sure if I’m looking at her anymore. “That’s not what she said.”
“What did she say?”
“To help you put your medicine in the pillbox. That’s it.”
My mom pauses as if to momentarily consider it. “Forget it. Do whatever you want.”
I’m about to give up and walk away to my room. But something in me doesn’t give up today, and I have no idea what it is.
I tell her that she can say whatever she wants, whether it’s about me controlling her, or how it’s supposed to be fun for me, but that I’m not going to give up, and that she shouldn’t either.
“So what do you want me to do?” she says, and I can tell something is about to break.
I look her straight in the eye. “I just want you to do what the doctor asked you to do. Put all your medicines, in one pillbox. That’s it.”
There’s a moment of pause. I sense it, and I take it.
“Just put these medicines,” I pick up the few stragglers that are the kitchen prescription bottles and place them right next to the pillbox, “inside the pillbox. Just like the other ones. That’s it.”
“Okay.”
My eyes shoot wide. “Really!?” I’m about to ask, but I don’t want to jinx it.
I grab a pad of paper and write up a note—a legal contract, if you will, because these things matter apparently—that my mom and I, together, will put all her medicines in a new, large pillbox, at the beginning of the week. And that she’ll take her medicines from that pillbox from then on.
She signs it.
And that’s what we do. My brother buys a large, dual-colored pillbox (which I tell my mom that my nephew personally picked it out, only a partial lie, because my nephew was actually there*) and on one quiet evening, my mom and I gather her twenty-ish pill bottles, and one-by-one, place them inside the pillbox.
I let her have an exception: she pills that she must take right before bedtime, and only because of the timing. That, actually makes sense.
And when we’re done, I breathe the biggest sigh of relief I’ve had in I have no idea how long.
I don’t know why these things are so hard. Part of me tells myself, “Dan, you don’t have a mental illness, that you know of at least. So you have no idea how hard it is to be them.” Yeah, well, I feel like I’m going to have some issues at this rate and let me tell you, I’d be happy to have someone help me out. I mean, come on, it’s just a pillbox.
Well, it is just a pillbox to me. Maybe not to my mom.
Still, I will take my win. Progress is progress, a step forward is still a step forward, and it deserves to be celebrated. So screw the healthy eating, I’m having fried chicken tonight.
Oh, and when I check to see if my mom follows her medicines correctly, she does. Of course she does.
Because it was easier, goddammit. Come, on.
*I was worried for a moment, because when my nephews came over, my mom told them: “Thank you for the pillbox. You picked it right?” But thankfully, these sorts of things are equally nebulous for kids, and they seem eager to have had a say in things.
“Yeah!” they exclaim back.
My mom laughs, a genuine laugh. “Well, thank you.”