Mom argues with me about her medication. She swears she took it, but the pills are still right there in the little dish I set out. Advice?

I found the pill dividers at the Dollar Tree work and are inexpensive.

use one of those daily pill dividers...make sure the slots are big enough to accommodate all pills & vitamin supplements. My dad took 2 of his cancer pills because he forgot he already took one, so fill the slots and put the rest where she can't get to them.

i went through the same thing. You will not win in this situation. My mother swore she took them when they were right in front of her. Said someone must have come into her apartment and put the pills back in. I was at the end of my rope and sat at her table crying. She wanted to know what I was crying about. I told her the pills. She just proceeded to make a sandwich and that was that. We ended up having to place her in a nursing home. It was too much for me to handle. I found a good place nearby (luckily) and realized that what I was doing was not good enough. She got much better care there than I could provide and I was able to visit her and enjoy her last months without feeling stressed. We did things together that I wasn’t able to do because I was too busy taking care if everything and putting out fires constantly. We had the ability then to just be together watching tv or talking about old times and enjoyed each other. For us it was the right decision.

She has dementia. There is no reasoning with dementia patients. Does she have a weekly pill container?

I am going through the exact situation w my 91 yo father. Says he takes them and too many doses are gone or no dose is gone...
Really though think about this:
They have a fatal brain disease. So if he gets too many of one or none of one, they still have a fatal disease..that will end sometime soon. We took my dad off cholesterol meds as he was extremely lethargic and unstable in that one. Lipitor made him even worse with his dementia.
Ask the doctor which ones can be taken away and look into palliative care.. just keep him safe from injury and let his body continue the fatal process... Many times we think we are doing them a favor by prolonging the inevitable. We all are going to die.. why prolong it with heart diagnostics, Expensive scans, and non life saving procedures when dementia is going to eventually take them...
Spend each day enjoying the time left, stop arguing and just do puzzles. Listen to music or chat. No more struggles , just peace and loving times. Who really cares if they took their cholesterol or blood pressure pill.
Signed, a nurse who wants to make the best of the final days and months. Praying you find wisdom and peace.

Some pharmacies will combine and dispense the medicine into pillpaks with time and day to take printed on them. This is generally a free service. I don't know if it will help but it's something to think about

Try crushing them and putting them in with some applesauce, pudding or even some oatmeal

I had the exact opposite problem with Mum. I used to have a weeks worth of tablets sorted into seven daily boxes and further sorted into breakfast, lunch, evening and bed-time boxes. This worked for a long time, but then she would take the pills designated for a particular time, then forget she had taken them and go and take the next lot or tomorrow's as well. This meant sometimes she was overdosing, sometimes she wasn't getting any. And she always blamed me if a box was empty, saying I hadn't sorted them out correctly. She would never accept that she'd taken too many. I was forever ringing the NHS helpline for advice, as she takes morphine, warfarin etc.

In the end I bought a timed dispenser, You can set it to dispense up to 6 times per day and only the the tablets for that time are accessible. Everything else is locked securely away. This way I can tell that she's taken them (there is very occasionally a tablet left, which she has missed), but the important thing for me, is that she can't get to the others.

My dad would insist that he'd taken his pills when the little pill containers were still full of them, or he'd take them on the wrong day, or he'd drop one and then take a random pill from a different day. It was a total mess. Finally, I talked to the doctor and pharmacist and discovered that he could actually just take them all at the same time, anytime of day, even though the pill container said take at 8 am or at 6 am or whatever. If you can get someone to review all her meds and then determine if you can give them to her in the evening (which is what worked best for my dad) you can just do it yourself. Your mother can no longer be responsible for taking them or even knowing where they are. The caregiver can only remind her that the pills are there. She can't make her take them or actually be responsible for giving them to her. I sympathize with your struggle. I've been there.

Why not simply stand there, show her you placing them in the dish and wait until she has taken them. If that doesn't work perhaps suggesting she needs the carer to give her all her medication by injection when she comes in might persuade her to swallow them. Think of her as a child and how you would ensure they took something, bribery might work, but don't fight over it. If she has some that cannot be taken before you leave in the morning for some reason discuss with her Dr or pharmacist changing the form she has to a once or twice a day one, that often helps reduce the number of occasions one has to fight if nothing else. Most things come in sustained release forms so timings can often be made to fit better with patient compliance.

Sometimes it helps to give your mom things she can control - choice of beverage with pills, taking them before or after meal... - and make the struggle for control not about taking medication. Also consider asking your pharmacist about which medications can be crushed. The crushable ones can be put into a bit of applesauce or pudding which may increase her likelihood of taking her medications - especially if you feed them to her.

Old folks are being forced to take too many pills. I agree with another comment. Perhaps some of these can be eliminated from the regimen. People in their eighties and nineties are not going to have their lives significantly lengthened or improved by most of what doctors want to do to them.

DH aunt, 95, with dementia, not taking her thyroid tablet was when I knew she was going to have to have extra help.

I used logic to help her understand she wasn’t taking them by comparing the number of pills left over to the calendar days left before a refill was due. Lot more pills left than days until a refill. That was early on. That pill was so important, had to be taken on an empty stomach, no food or sweetened coffee for 30 min etc. She simply couldn’t remember she hadn’t taken it. It’s like you said, she had taken it so often, it seemed she had.
She did understood that she hadn’t (couldn't have) because of the math. We went on for years with the pills being a bit of a struggle with one solution working for awhile and then no longer working as she further declined.

The last thing I tried that still works for me is giving the pills in separated batches. They weren’t as intimidating to her. She would have forgotten she had taken the first batch and so was agreeable to the second one as it was just a couple of pills I would say to minimize the importance.

I have always refused an am/pm dosing as she had no one to give evening pills to her in earlier days. Occasionally she had an antibiotic that required an evening pill. Twice a day might be ideal, once a day may be sufficient. I never had a problem getting the doctors to prescribe this way. But not everyone’s health issues allow.

Tothills suggestions are good. At 98, I would want to know which of the pills were absolutely necessary and why and offer those first. Then I wouldn’t sweat the small stuff. Some can be crushed and added to a favorite food but when she doesn’t eat the food you just have to let it go and try something different. DH aunt needs to take Metamucil powder daily. She would struggle with getting that down. Now we just stir it in her coffee and no more struggle. If she doesn’t drink her coffee that day, it’s ok. She will drink some tomorrow. It’s what she does most of the time that matters.

Your mom has lived to 98 and has obviously done a lot of things right to have done so. Try to let the worry of it go. I know it’s hard to do but sometimes we forget that they are in decline and things will change regardless of what we do.

I recently listened to a podcast where I learned that aricept slowed the pulse! I was so upset about that because for years we had to adjust her BP tablets daily to keep her pulse at an acceptable level. When she came off of the aricept the pulse went up to a level high enough we could give the same BP meds routinely. She is on hospice for dementia. We know Aricept won’t cure it. We had considered that it slowed it and perhaps helped keep her moods stable so her geriatrician continued to prescribe. When I found that what it truly slowed was her pulse I felt so foolish. Here I was worried about a possible pacemaker when all I needed to do was stop giving a pill that didn’t work anyway.

Each persons situation/health concerns are different but when you start noticing you are having to argue or persuade, it’s time to change things up. Its a fine line. We work to keep them well taken care of but when they push back it’s time to regroup. I hope you get some suggestions that help.

Difficult.

We paid caregivers have very strict rules when it comes to medications, and it's far more common for people to get stroppy with us because they think we're being obstructive than to worry because we're too cavalier. But anyway.

One rule is that we may not dispense medication for the client to take "later." We dispense, we pass, we observe, we record. If the client changes her mind after we've removed the medication from its container and decides not to take it, for example, it's a major pain in the behind - lots of paperwork!

But there are sound reasons for the protocols, and you've highlighted one. Don't leave medication out for her to take because it leads to confusion, uncertainty, ambiguity - all very bad things in the context. Either wake her up and give it to her with a nice drink, or leave it for the caregiver to handle.

A bit of formality might make your mother more compliant, as well as reducing the chances of getting it wrong. Use a proper chart and record what's given. If you Google "MAR chart templates" you should find plenty to choose from.

Find out if there are any meds that can be discontinued and if the others can be crushed into applesauce or another food. Perhaps there’s a new issue with swallowing?

Talk to her doctor or pharmacist and find out if the pills have to be taken in the morning? Sometimes the schedule can be modified.

While you are talking to the doctor find out what the pills are for and what they are treating, what the outcome will be if she does not take them as scheduled. You want to be prepared for a worse case scenario.

Also ask the pharmacist about side effects from each pill and if there are any combined side effects? Some medications cause significant side effects and that may be part of the reason she is resistant to taking them.

Another thought, from your post, it appears you leave the pills out for Mum. Perhaps you need to change the pill taking routine? What about taking them into her bedroom, waking her and giving them to her? Or setting the pills in the dish, but putting them in a different place so the aid who comes in can give them to her?