When I am every 3 months at the beginning of each quarter jumping into the snake pit marked by the sign

“Required medication and medical devices”

I globally put the blame on myself meanwhile. If nothing works out right away despite all my efforts, it has to be up to myself, otherwise it is not explicable to me anymore.

In the novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Doulas Adams there is a truck driver who is always on the road in the rain. Unbelievable… he is a rain god, he just doesn’t know it himself.

It is probably similar with me and my orders of medication and medical devices, otherwise I would have to claim that nobody does his work properly anymore, and I don’t want to be assumptive.

After I paid my 10 €-membership fee every 3 months (translator’s note: as a member of a public health insurance in Germany you have to pay a surcharge of 10 € per quarter for medical consultation) the fun begins. I get a bunch of prescriptions from my family physician, where you can’t expect at 16 positions that everything is filled out correctly. It must be my karma that even the corrected prescriptions include minor errors sometimes.

If everything is correct, the prescriptions are split in two piles, medical devices and medication prescriptions, and then scanned immediately, because I don’t trust myself anymore.

I would like to point out here that I always pretty much need the same stuff.

I place the order of the medical devices per e-mail and attach the scanned prescriptions, and I send the original prescriptions by good old mail later.

For my pharmacy order I use a conventional telephone. The probability that I receive all pills as ordered in the correct quantities and from the correct producer is virtually zero and belongs into the realms of fantasy.

You can’t seriously expect that in a subsequent delivery with 3 boxes on the delivery slip also 3 boxes are included. With 2 boxes still 66% are correct, grade D, passing, okay…

The quantity of pills was correct this time, for a change the delivery slip wasn’t.

Now the delivery guy has put a box of pills in my mailbox which I will return personally today, whereupon I am convinced that I will hold exactly this box in my hands in 3 months time, this is not Aspirin.

Why is it not working, it can only be up to me…

It is not better with my medical devices.

Due to the so-called direct shipments I receive my materials from 4 different deliverers, who honour me with their visit between 10 and 19 h.

The guys always want to put the cartons on my knees and get off, I don’t like this at all. In the evening my corridor wall with all its boxes reminds a bit of the Berlin Wall.

In one of the warehouses they seem to have too much cardboard boxes and filling material. For 4 boxes of compresses and 1 liter skin cleaner they use a box of 60cm x 60 cm. As my friend usually says: Logistics doesn’t have anything to do with logic.

This time it was even the wrong type of compresses, they can pick up their box again, in the meantime it will stand in my way again. Maybe in an act of revenge I will put some old files from my apprenticeship into the box.

I don’t want to get upset anymore and I keep it with Douglas Adams:

I am probably a

God of Wrong Deliveries.

If everything would work out well at once I could certainly take some pills less.

Translator BL

My daily consumption of various pills against all and everything which partially remind of suppositories in their form is altogether a complete meal.

I enjoy them in the meantime like gummi bears.

The colours are great, but the industry still needs to work a little on the taste.

Michelin-Stars for the most delicious dope, that would be something.

According to the motto: A problem shared is a problem halved, some pills might be halved and quartered.
Luckily my wife takes over the weekly pill destruction.

If I would try this by myself I would have probably gone into the light out of despair (suicidal tendencies).

I have found a

Pill splitter type Apex Ultra

which is really working and has additional protection at the blade.

It is hardly believable but it has a price incl. shipment of less than 10 €!

Source of supply enquiries as usual under rollinator@eigude.de .

Click also on tag “pills”.

Translator BL

If you are like me major customer of the pharmaceutical industry you should expect that the pills will be delivered already sorted according to intake date and daytime.

Because unfortunately this is not the case you have to prepare your daily dope yourself.

To elicit the pills out of the blister there are except from the well-tried “I squeeze hard with my thumb” technique the most different technical aids.

To what extent these pieces are useful is of course depending on the particular handicap of the user.

Here is a small selection:

With this a little futuristic appearing

double cone,

you are able to squeeze the pills out with one hand. But only very few fit into the collecting bowl.

This small

Taiwanese Pill Puncher

you should always use very gently. Sometimes you have to cut the blisters so that you can also squeeze out middle sized pills. But it is more robust than it looks like.

New on the market is this

German metal model.

Developed and built by a locksmithery. Not suitable for capsules, the spring steel sheet has to be bent back again and again. But the white bowl can be removed which might be quite useful.

On the American market I have found this

Pill Puncher.

My current winner. Simple and well-thought. The collecting bowl is the entire square lower part with which the pills can be emptied after squeezing them out like with a shovel.

I haven’t found a pill puncher yet which I can use reasonably with my buckled fingers. If you know or use other types please write a comment, or e-mail as usual to rollinator@eigude.de .

I need urgently new dope!

Translator BL