medications

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I’m Having A Dilemma With My Medications

I’m having a little dilemma right now over when to take my pills. A week ago I had no issues of when to take my pills. Now, I’m in a quandary.

dilemma with medications

For most of my life I never took a pill for anything. The number of times I took an aspirin or Tylenol was probably in the single digits.  

But at age 56 I had a heart attack and that changed everything. I started taking 7 pills a day and then went down to 5 pills after three months. One year later I was down to 4 pills a day. 

I was making great progress. A few years later I even managed to cut one pill in half, so technically I’m only taking 3 and half pills a day now. 

But since I started, I have always taken them in the morning with breakfast. For almost eight years that’s been my pattern.  

It’s hard to remember back that far, but I think I just decided to take them all together, no matter what the instructions were. 

For me I knew that I could remember to take my pills once a day. But if I had to take some at one time and some at another, I figured I would forget sometimes.

As a result, over the eight years, I’ve only missed taking my pills maybe four times … maybe.

I’ve been very consistent. I put them in my hand, throw them into my mouth, and down a full glass of water. That’s it – don’t have to worry about them for the rest of the day. 

But this past week my sister had a heart attack and I was in the hospital room when they were going over her medications. She was given all the same medications that I’m taking … but they told her to take one of them in the evening. 

I don’t do that! 

Then my brother-in-law piped up that his pharmacist told him to take this medication in the evening as well. 

Almost eight years into taking a medication and now I’m concerned that I am taking it at the wrong time. I’m thinking I now need to figure out a way to remember to take this one lonely pill in the evening, that maybe it would be better for me to do that.

I’m feeling that I’m at risk right now taking the pill in the morning like I do.

So I’ve decided to start taking this pill in the evening. This morning I put it aside and took my other pills.

But now I’m concerned that I might have side effects taking this pill at a different time because way back I had a muscle problem with it (you can read about that here). Since then it’s been good but I don’t want to upset the apple cart and experience muscle pain again. 

So I’m having a dilemma as to whether I should just take the pill now or wait until evening. 

… Life was a little simpler a week ago. 

Here’s the thing: When you are considering giving your life to Christ, or if God is calling you to go deeper with Him, it will require changes. One thing you will have to consider is whether these changes will be easy to keep. Will they cause a disruption in your life? Will you like them in the long run? When it comes to taking pills, I can’t tell you for sure, but when it comes to God, you can be sure that God will only ask you to make changes that will be in your best interest. And God doesn’t make mistakes – guaranteed!

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What changes should you be considering right now? Leave your comments and questions below. 

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Beware of Dangerous Fruit

You’ll notice the name and header of my blog have changed. When I created the blog ten months ago, I really had no idea what to call it so I just went with the church name.  I made this name change because it better reflects the content of my blog. Let me know what you think of it. (I also simplified the website address to psthatslife.com)

One night this week, I came home from work, and instead of smelling that sweet aroma of food being prepared, my wife Lily was engrossed in research.

grapefruit

Now when I get home from work, I make a beeline for the pantry.  Nothing gets in my way of that. If Lily is in the path, I greet her with a kiss and a hug, but not a long hug because, she is in the path to the pantry.

You see, I get hypoglycemic which means I have to eat something right away.  It could be anything, but a kiss will not cut it and a hug will only keep me from falling down, and even then, I could take her down with me.  I need food when I get home and I need it fast!

So, as I was filling my face with chips (oh, did I write that?) Lily was calling me to come see what she had found on the internet.  After scarfing two more handfuls of chips, I made my way to her office where she told me about some research on grapefruit.

Apparently, grapefruit reacts to some medications, creating an overdose effect, a massive overdose in some cases.  (When she mentioned grapefruit, I immediately thought that would be a good chaser to the chips I had just eaten.)

But she was suggesting I shouldn’t eat grapefruit anymore. The whole reason I take “Crestor” instead of “Lipitor” is because I like a little grapefruit for breakfast. Now she was telling me studies show that another pill I take (Plavix) reacts to grapefruit.

I kind of laughed at that point because I have been eating grapefruit everyday for the ten months I have been on this pill. Then I checked and said, “Yup, my heart’s still beating. Hey, I’m alive.”  Lily just rolled her eyes and told me to watch the news report on the internet.

The video was from ABC news. They had their medical expert speaking as if it was a life or death matter. At the close of the interview he said, “Whatever you do, call your doctor and stop taking those drugs.”

I laughed, then asked Lily to play it back. I was right! The expert doctor said “stop taking the drug”. My doctor told me to never to miss taking “Plavix”; it’s keeping my stent open.  But this guy said stop the drug, but keep on eating grapefruit!

So the next morning, I had grapefruit for breakfast.  Later I viewed the video again and they had corrected it. Lil was still worried so she called the pharmacist and he suggest that I stop eating grapefruit.

They’re ganging up on me!

Here’s the thing: Even though it was a possible danger for me to keep eating grapefruit, I ate it the next day anyway.  When confronted by our sin, our natural tendency is to keep on sinning. The key isn’t to dismiss the danger just because nothing bad has happened yet. Rather, dwell deeply on the harm sin in your life can bring and make the change.

That’s Life,

Paul

Question: How do you react to sin in your life? Leave your comment below.