More Gifts for Cancer Patients

I was in The Container Store  www.containerstore.com today.  I bought 3 items that would be perfect to go in a cancer patient's gift basket.  The first two items (because cancer patients have a lot of pill bottles to handle) are awesome to help organize the actual pill bottles in a medicine cabinet. 

Be mindful though, as sometimes medicine cabinets are not the best place for your drugs because they can get damp, and this can affect the effectiveness of your pills.   But if you are going to store your pills in the medicine cabinet anyway, here are two awesome products to help you keep a little order in your life.

The first:  Linus™ Cabinet Organizer with Drawer.  Yes, yes, yes...it looks like any old plastic organizer you could pick up elsewhere.  Here's the thing.  It fits PERFECTLY on any medicine cabinet shelf.   This one has a little pull out drawer.  $9.99 at The Container Store.  It allows you plenty of places to put bottles and even to "stack" them on top of  a little pull out drawer for "regular" stuff. 

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Linus™ Handled Cabinet Organizer:  Only $5.99 at The Container Store.  Also fits perfectly.  You can't stack with this one, but it fits many prescription bottles nicely.

The third item:   Weekly Pill Organizer

Sounds unexciting for a gift, but believe me this kind is hard to find with all the days of the week AND breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime compartments.   Usually I see a lot of pill cases with just breakfast, lunch and dinner as options, or "a.m." and "p.m" only.  This is the best as this is usually the schedule when most medications are prescribed.

I like how you can take out a whole days' supply in case you are just headed overnight somewhere and only want to take a one day supply of medications with you (see picture below).

I will say this one is kind of large, so it should serve as your "home base" pill organizer.  

I would suggest picking the same day that you will always fill your pill container, so that you don't forget.  I taught my 90 year old mother to fill hers every Sunday.  

Also, for an elderly friend, you might want to try taking one of each of their pills and gluing it to a sheet of paper.  Next to the pill put the drug name, what it is for,  and how many times a day they are supposed to take it.  I did this for my mom and then slid it into a plastic page protector.  Every week when she fills her pill organizer for the week she checks it against the guide I gave her.  Kind of a visual "cheat sheet".   If they give her a new pill that doesn't look like the others, she knows to call me or to ask her pharmacist about why it looks different (sometimes just a change in drug company).  Anyway, my mom really says this helps her. 

Now none of these gifts seem too exciting.  But in a gift basket with other items, I promise that the cancer patient will appreciate them!

Hope this helps.