Listen to Your Mama When She Tells You about Her Medications

Estate planning is about so much more than documents. It’s about making your family’s end of life issues less difficult for you and for them.

If you have elderly parents, chances are they are taking at least one daily medication. My father had perhaps a dozen medications. He had one of those weekly pill boxes for the morning and a separate one for the evening. Every Sunday, my sister or I would go over to his apartment and fill the pillboxes for the following week. We also had a box to store all the original pharmacy pill boxes with a sheet of paper listing each drug, how many times per day it was taken, and the dosage. We took that paper with us every time we went to a new doctor or to the hospital.

Do you know what medications each of your parents are on? Have they tried to tell you and you’ve told them that you don’t need to know yet? Do you know whether they are taking the medications that have been prescribed?

It’s very hard to switch from being your parents’ child to their caregiver. You feel like it’s not your place to tell your parents what they should be doing. Yet, you know that you would feel guilty if they had been trying to get you to help them and you couldn’t deal with the change in roles so you ignored their problems. If your parents are trying to tell you about their medications, where their wills are located, whether they want a “Do Not Resuscitate” order on their medical chart under certain circumstances, you must listen and keep that information written down for when it is needed. Doctors rely on their patients telling them what medications they are taking so they do not prescribe additional medications that duplicate what they are already taking or have bad consequences when they are taken with certain other medications. If your parents can’t tell their doctor every medication that every doctor has prescribed, then you must step in and make it your business to get the doctors that information. Or you can keep your head in the sand and wait for a crisis to happen to the ones you love.