Jrc, If mom is having enough difficulty that her meds need to be locked up and automatically dispensed, the best thing to do is hire a caregiver or Med Tech. Home care companies have them. The make a 15 minute visit and hand the pills to the person and watch them swallow. It's also a little visit for the elderly and breaks up the monotony of the day.
Making sure the time is right to take meds, making sure the meds get in the mouth and swallowed, making sure it's the right dose.....all these things require the services of a person. No machine or electrical box with alarms can take the place of a caregiver.
IMO, if your mom needs this much help with meds, it may be time to think about Assisted Living, etc.
Whether dementia or just poor memory, taking medicine can be life saving and vital. Many hospitalizations are from the side effects of missing medications.
I had to move my mom to memory care (stage 5 Alzheimer's) when she started taking vitamins for a headache and sinus pills for anxiety.
I was thinking exactly along the lines Sunnygirl outlines. The visiting nurse brought several models of pill dispensers to my mother, one after the other. The one that just popped them out on time continued to hold the dispensed pills until someone came again. If the pill tray got full, she just moved them to the table. One required you to push a button to dispense the pill and a buzzing alarm kept going until you did that. My late 80s mom with severe arthritis crawled under the table and unplugged it to shut it up.
Sigh.
For Mom, the problem wasn't that she couldn't remember to take them on time, it was that she couldn't remember why she was taking pills at all. "I'm fine. Who takes pills when they are fine?" Inability to manage her pills was the final straw in determining that she could no longer live independently.
I don't have any recommendations for those, but, I would just suggest that there is always a risk that meds will still not be taken even with an automatic pill box and with reminders. I have witnessed my LO forget she was doing something while in the process of doing it. So, the person can hold a pill, then lay it down and forget to take it,. hide it or lose it. I suppose it depends on their level of progression, but, when the degree is severe and the meds are vital, I'd question the risks of leaving her on her own to take the meds.
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If mom is having enough difficulty that her meds need to be locked up and automatically dispensed, the best thing to do is hire a caregiver or Med Tech. Home care companies have them. The make a 15 minute visit and hand the pills to the person and watch them swallow. It's also a little visit for the elderly and breaks up the monotony of the day.
Making sure the time is right to take meds, making sure the meds get in the mouth and swallowed, making sure it's the right dose.....all these things require the services of a person. No machine or electrical box with alarms can take the place of a caregiver.
IMO, if your mom needs this much help with meds, it may be time to think about Assisted Living, etc.
Whether dementia or just poor memory, taking medicine can be life saving and vital. Many hospitalizations are from the side effects of missing medications.
I had to move my mom to memory care (stage 5 Alzheimer's) when she started taking vitamins for a headache and sinus pills for anxiety.
Sigh.
For Mom, the problem wasn't that she couldn't remember to take them on time, it was that she couldn't remember why she was taking pills at all. "I'm fine. Who takes pills when they are fine?" Inability to manage her pills was the final straw in determining that she could no longer live independently.
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