Yes—it’s definitely good to have a reliable source of information about these things. Like having the days-of-the-week written on certain everyday medications. You can just go look and know whether or not you’ve taken today’s dose. On the occasions where I’ve had to take medicine that doesn’t have these (eg a course of antibiotics) I’ve had that “nagging sense” too → not knowing means you could either skip a dose, or double-dose. So writing the days of the week on the plastic next to each pill helps with that. Having something that you can check easily and that you trust helps reduce the anxiety a lot.
This was particularly a problem for me after my stroke, because the brain damage made my memory unusually unreliable. Eventually I put a sheet of paper up by my pills and checked off each day after I took them. (Actually, on bad days, I would sometimes lose track between the first bottle and the third of which pills I’d already taken, so I established the habit of moving each one from left to right after I took it.)
Yes—it’s definitely good to have a reliable source of information about these things. Like having the days-of-the-week written on certain everyday medications. You can just go look and know whether or not you’ve taken today’s dose. On the occasions where I’ve had to take medicine that doesn’t have these (eg a course of antibiotics) I’ve had that “nagging sense” too → not knowing means you could either skip a dose, or double-dose. So writing the days of the week on the plastic next to each pill helps with that. Having something that you can check easily and that you trust helps reduce the anxiety a lot.
(nods) Absolutely.
This was particularly a problem for me after my stroke, because the brain damage made my memory unusually unreliable. Eventually I put a sheet of paper up by my pills and checked off each day after I took them. (Actually, on bad days, I would sometimes lose track between the first bottle and the third of which pills I’d already taken, so I established the habit of moving each one from left to right after I took it.)
Repeated checking CAUSES memory distrust.
In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) checkers distrust in memory persists despite extensive checking.
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12600401