I have a pillbox. The kind old folks have; the kind I have.
It’s not one of those stereotypical ones, though; not the long translucent rectangular one with the days of the week printed atop each of the seven square compartments. It’s a much less conspicuous version, but it serves the same purpose – holding seven days of pills that I take on the regular. I guess I could go on a tangent here and talk about how much I dislike the fact that I take pills on the regular… how that makes me feel old and distinctly like the typical over-prescribed American… but that’s not what this entry is about.
This entry is about how I use my pillbox, and how that makes me feel.
I load that thing up; put two weeks of pills in there (they fit because I don’t take all that much, and half of what I take is by choice like vitamins or allergy pills during Spring). With two dosages in each day’s compartment, it’s a super dense load, and, if I’m being honest, not that convenient because it’s really cumbersome to pull out the right stuff from the big jumble of each day. But, it works for me.
The thing is, I sort of measure the passage of time by this pillbox. Every time I get to the last dose in the last little compartment I find myself wondering, “Man, two weeks already? Feels like I just filled this thing.” Every time.
So I bring it into the bathroom and refill it from the various Rx bottles I keep in the drawer or under the sink. I then take it back to my bedside table, where it will live for another two weeks until I once again wonder “didn’t I just do this?”
Two weeks at a time, dosing myself to the grave.