"I want to take fewer pills"

This was one of my reasons for having WLS: I wanted to take fewer pills. Well, I should have specified that I wanted to take fewer prescription pills! While I have been able to get off my diabetes medication (Metformin, two 1000 mg pills per day) here's what I currently take most days:

First row: Levothyroxine, Protonix, Simvastatin, Lotrel (all my prescription meds) Multivitamins, Krill oil, baby aspirin (approved by my WL surgeon)

Second row: Calcium, calcium and more calcium

Third row: Iron, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin B12, Biotin, Prunelax (senna laxative, not every day), probiotic pearl.

And this doesn't include the Doxycycline I was put on yesterday for my rosacea!

Generally, it's my understanding that sleevers take fewer pills, and DSers may have to take more. This isn't vitamin wars, I just thought it would be interesting to see a visual of my daily meds/supplements routine and that maybe some newcomers may find it interesting. At first, I didn't know how I would ever fit all these in in one day! And figuring out when to take which with which, and how long to separate what from what was challenging. It's fast becoming second nature, though. I bought six pill containers from Walgreens that have three slots each, and I load them all up ahead of time so that I can pop one open and easily see what I still have to take on any given day.

I hope this is educational/entertaining!

I got off 3 scripts and added 20 vitamins.  Ha Ha, jokes on us.

Daily I take my vitamins in 4 batches. Early am, late am, early afternoon and bedtime. This way if I miss one of the first three batches I have time still to make it up at dinner time. I refill all my vitamins every Sunday, and take my b12 sublingual 5000 once a week while filling the containers.

It took almost a year to get this down so I feel like I have my vitamins under control!

Batch 1. generic centrum silver, 2 stool softeners, 2 calcium citrate petite

Batch 2. Potassium, magnesium, probiotic, fish oil, 2 calcium citrate petite

Batch 3 generic centrum silver, 2 stool softeners, 2 calcium citrate petite. (3 times a week I include Dry D 3 50000, b50 complex and a vision support vitamin in this batch. )

batch 4. Bedtime. 2 25 mg carbonyl Iron, 500 mg vitamin c, melatonin

I also take another 500 mg calcium citrate most days in the form of either a calcet creamy bite or by adding a scoop of UP cal D (powdered calcium citrate) to a protein shake

  I use 7 of these, 1 per day

Check with your doc - I was told we don't absorb the calcium when we take it with vits that's why most programs for RNY'ers has multi vit and calcium hours apart. And each 500 mg. calcium is

3-4 hours after the first one.

Jen

These are petites.  200 mg not 500. 

I'm certainly not trying to argue the point with you, you absolutely have many years of post-operative weight loss experience while I'm just a few months out. However, the ASMBS says that two hours is the minimum needed between calcium doses, and the couple of citations I've found so far concur. Do you have any references for the time frames you've given?

You can take calcium citrate with your multivitamin with no problem. The only issue would be if your multi has iron, in which case the iron won't be absorbed. And two hours between doses of calcium citrate, and between calcium and iron, is correct.

That's what I was going by, Grim, that the iron in the multi would be the problem. Since I supplement the iron anyway, I'm not too worried about it in the multi.

Yea, my multis are 50+ so no iron. I also take those separately at bedtime w vit c. 

The reason not to take calcium with your multi is because the extra calcium will keep you from absorbing what little iron is in the multi. Calcium and iron bind to the same receptors, but calcium wins every time. (*grin*) If you take extra iron, take it with C and away from everything else, by about two hours either way. You can take calcium doses two hours apart.

Wow good for you that you can swallow pills.  I can't.  I take only vitamins you can chew.  The only prescription I take is Xanax as needed and I let it dissolve in the back of my throat before swallowing.  I gag and pewk if I try to swallow a pill.  The odd thing is when I was a little girl my mother used to ask that my medicine be pills because I had no trouble swallowing pills, now that I had rny forget about it.  Not sure why this happened but its annoying at best.