Now, so they did the requisite tests that okayed me to be on the trial and they gave me these tablets [laughs] and I couldn’t believe the size of the package. It was nearly A4, and it was that thick, and it was a sealed foil bag. And in the sealed foil bag were these giant bubbles with fairly large pills in… I just thought, “What’s this waste?” I mean I was quite shocked that I had to take them out of a box, out of a bag, out of a capsule to take the tablet and then to pack it all back in.
So I got put on the twenty-eight day trial, that’s right, and I took all but three. Now, if anybody is on multiple medication - and I have to take five tablets daily and one at night. Previous trials gave us boxes of seven, so after you’d been the chemist you can dish out a week’s. I usually dish out a month’s. So it’s the best way to encourage you to take your tablets, knowing that you haven’t got to sort them out. So I dished these twenty-eight out into four lots of seven, along with my other medication, and at the end of the month I went back
And she said to me, “Did you bring the three back that you didn’t take?” So I said, “No, because I didn’t know I was supposed to.” Now I showed her, I’d brought the packet back, because they’d asked me to. And at this point I must mention, interestingly, although my husband’s now off the trial, we were both given a packet and there was no way of differentiating his packet and mine, and I think there, I read there was serial numbers on it the same, but they were the placebos and we knew that at that time. It was to see how we managed with no drugs, right? But it did strike me a bit strange. Anyway, he got thrown off the trial so it wasn’t an issue, but it could have been, and there needs to be some demarcation.
Anyway, so I said, “I didn’t know I had to bring them back.” And she was looking at this sort of empty thing like I’d messed - you know, I felt, “Oh god, I’ve messed up the trial.” Because this is a ‘what if’ that hadn’t been considered. What if somebody takes their tablets out and lays them in rows and doesn’t take them? And I wasn’t doing anything abnormal, because it was going into ASCOT* boxes. It’s my previous experience of what trials expect from people.
The one thing that seemed really important to them was that the same tablets that weren’t taken stayed with the packet. No-one had said that [laughs]. No-one had said that at all, because they could have done it so easily. But they maybe need to say, “How do you manage your drugs? Are you going to get this thing out of a box, out of a bag, out of a - and take one, put it all back, every day?” Of course you’re not. You know, like it’s bad enough just taking it out and pressing it out. People are going to manage their drugs differently.
*ASCOT = Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial.
FOOTNOTE: It is possible that some medicines may lose their effectiveness if they are left out of their sealed packaging for too long. If you are thinking about using a tablet dispenser you may want to check with trial staff first.
