How many pills!??!!! Too bl%&*y many

G'day, you're back again. Hello and welcome. I hope your week has been kind to you and you've been kind to yourselves :-)

I'm sure at some point you've all found yourselves going, 'how many pills?!!' I know I have. And you know when you take too many pills that you are on first name terms and christmas card lists with your pharmacist!!! LOL.

One of my most hated tasks each week is the pill dispenser. Putting all those little pills into each day slot. Then there's the multi's vitamins and fish oil capsules etc. You'd think as a nurse I'd of sort of embraced it by now?! Nah, not one bit. But I do it and I pop those pills and just get on with it.

I'm on a lot less now. There's some I'll never come off. Here's my little list:

Pariet (Rabeprazole) 40mg for gastritis and reflux
Nizatidine (Tazac, Axid and Nizac) 150mg again for reflux at night time
Plaquenil 200mg daily
Folic Acid 5g the day after my lovely chemo drug, Methotrexate
Methotrexate 20mg once a week. I've been told I'll NEVER come off this. Boohoo. It makes me feel so nauseous the morning after I've taken it. But its suck it up girlfriend and stop moaning.
Endep (Amitryptilline) 50mg at night for Fibromyalgia
Herbal sleepers - Valerian and Tranquil Night from Blackmores
Panadeine Forte as needed each day, can't sleep without it

You don't realise how big your list is until you catch your family watching you taking your pills. My dad takes a pill a day for cholesterol/BP. My mum takes nothing. I was sleeping in the same bed as my sister for 3 weeks a few years ago, when I went home to England, and I kept waking her up when I took my panadeine forte, scrunching the aluminium foil pill packets!!!! How naughty!

I think us Lupies are very organised. You have to be. Drs appointments, keeping on top of your scripts, the pill stash (now in a much larger box) and doling out the pills into the weekly dispenser.

I'm sure many of you get very bored with the pills but we know how important they are to keeping us alive and well. I'm over the resistance stage and I'm at acceptance. I used to be the sort of girl who would resist a paracetamol for a headache. I look at my stash now and can hardly remember that girl. I fought the steroids and the chemo drugs. Once I gave in and admitted defeat and took them and looked at my life I started to get better. It has been a long long road. I'm there...in remission...and I'm praying that I stay there. Every little joint ache and twinge makes you aware that you can't take remission for granted. Its a lifestyle thing and I'm so very careful.

BTW I'm back to my writing and thats a big part of who I am and why I'm well.

Have a good week and I hope your pain days are few and your good sleeps are many XX