Medicine Square

Photo description: Codee’s Bitmoji standing next to a personified syrringe. Both are smiling.

Once you arrive at medicine Square, you get off the train and walk through a room with several counters and assistants behind them. Then you come to a maze of streets, the names of which are difficult to pronounce.

It is the intention that you register your symptoms at the correct desk. You will then be directed to the correct street where you will meet another assistant. They will give you a medicine and you will take it back to Community Care Station.

If you only need one medicine, that is usually not a problem. The care worker then calls the assistants in the counter room at Medicine Square. Your medicine will be placed on a checklist and the box will be given to you every morning. You take out the medicine yourself and take it.

But what if you need multiple medicines?

Before I ever came to Community Care Station, I always put the medicines in a pill dispensor. I put multiple alarms in my phone so I wouldn’t forget both the dispensor and my eye drops and that’s how I dealt with it.

Then I ended up at Community Care Station. At the intake I indicated that this was no longer possible for me. Filling the pill dispensor was not easy due to the combination of poor eyesight and decreased muscle strength and I often slept through the morning alarms.

The community health service wanted to help me with that. Only at Community Care Station there are a number of rules that healthcare employees must adhere to. All medicines should be signed off and especially the pills should not be touched with their hands. So they can’t fill or use a pill dispensor.

The employees of Medicine Square have come up with a great solution for this. They started renovating there a few years ago. Both Baxter Street and Mediroll Boulevard were constructed.

Baxter Street and Mediroll Boulevard are so popular that there is a long queue of visitors. Only after two weeks do you end up at the beginning of the line and oh yes… as a client you are not allowed to go there without supervision from the community care employees. You get are included in every aspect of your care but they take the lead at Mediroll Boulevard.

In the two weeks we were still in the queue, I really started to understand why the rules are so strict. It’s really hard to hand out medicines from a pill dispensor if you’re not allowed to touch them yourself. Besides, that box is just as confusing as the maze of streets with difficult names. You can’t sign off anything if you have no idea what you’re actually administering.

But team work makes the dream work and together we get through the maze of different colored pills.

The sisters discovered that I have a hidden talent. Just by feeling the shape of each tablet and looking at the color, I know exactly which medicine it is. They are impressed by that.

But sometimes we accidentally drop those pills and then it’s a race to see who can find the most. Me then. Because even if the sister sees one lying there, she may not touch it!

As we work together to find solutions so that the sisters don’t have to touch the pills when handing them over, the line at Baxter Street gets shorter and shorter. Finally we arrive at Mediroll Boulevard. What a relief that is!

I never have to turn fill a pill dispensor again. The difficult work is already done. The nurses only need to shake the Baxter sachets in my hand. After they’ve signed everything off, of course. There is a small description of each medicine on the sachets. The name and markings through which you can recognize the pills. My hidden talent is no longer needed. But every now and then it’s fun to name the names myself when the pills are in my hand. I will not let that talent go to waste.

It’s so nice and relaxed on the Boulevard. That’s a lot of fun. But one morning after my care routine was finished, I get on the train and one of the sisters tells me that I’m actually in the wrong carriage. They’ll fix that, but I have to wait for the district nurse who belongs to this carriage. She will explain how the journey will continue. Are you sitting comfortably? Because the explanation will come with the next blog.