FRANCES: I had called Dr. Thompson's office (he is my family doctor) just after 1:00PM for a refill of my prescriptions and his office nurse said they would fax it over to the pharmacy in my community.  At about ten after 5, I called the pharmacy to see if I could pick up my medications at 5:30 – they said that I should wait until about 5:45 and they should be ready by then. I drove over and picked up my prescriptions at right around 5:45.

I talked with the pharmacist who wanted to clarify the dose of the blood thinners that I was on because I hadn't been on them very long, and Dr. Thompson had been changing the dose I was taking every time he re-did the prescription so that my blood levels were in the right place.   No one ever really explained to me that I should look closely at the color of the pills and that the little numbers on the pills indicated what strength they are – I know that now and I really pay more attention to what I am taking – but nobody told me before to pay attention to all that.  I am doing fine now, but I sure wish it was easier for someone my age to tell the difference between the different strengths of those medications.

SARAH: I got a call from the emergency department at the hospital the day that my Mom went in by ambulance and luckily, I guess, they asked me to bring my Mom's medications with me, I never would have thought of that. So I stopped by her house and picked up all her pill bottles and drove to the hospital. 

It was pretty scary seeing her in there - they had to give her a blood transfusion and she had to stay in the hospital for two days. 

One of the things that I noticed when I realized what has happened was how close in colour the medications that my Mom was given are – and they are the same size – I could barely tell them apart in good lighting! How is an older person with poor eyesight supposed to tell them apart? There is nothing on the teaching sheet that Mom got from the pharmacy that talks about the colours of the pills, or that different strengths of the same medicine are different colours.

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