blister pack : Gay & Black Glossary

You can get your pharmacy to package your medications into morning and evening… doses of all your medications in sealed plastic bubbles. I have 10 prescription medications, plus Immodium, plus vitamins and probiotics. It helps manage the prescription medications.

Advantages

• You don’t have to manage refills of all your different medications. The pharmacy talks to doctors for you to get the refills and tracks when you need them.
• Your doses contain all the pills and no duplicates. The pharmacy is more accurate than you in preparing a week’s doses.
• If you drop your blister pack, the pills stay sealed in their pouches. You don’t have a giant pile of pills to sort out.
• If you spill coffee on your blister pack, the bubbles protect your pills.
• The blister pack is light weight for travel.

Disadvantages

• You have to get a new blister pack delivered every week. They don’t give you a couple of months supply because even a tiny change in your prescriptions would invalidate the packs.
• If there is an earthquake, you will usually have only a few days supply.
• If anything goes wrong with delivery, you are out of everything, not just one drug.
• You have to be home one evening a week to accept the delivery.
• If you miss a dose, there is no way to get back in sync except by wasting pills.
• You press to burst an aluminum seal on the bubble. It can suddenly give way spraying one dose on the floor. At least it is not the whole tray.
• Blister packs do not handle your non-prescription medications and vitamins.
• Blister packs do not handle medications you do not take regularly, e.g. gout medication.
• My pharmacy prepares blister packs at no charge. Yours may charge a fee.