My dad has been taking 22 scheduled pills daily. Most are prescription, with some various multivitamins and low-dose aspirin in the mix. Medicine management is one of the key things that he needs help with. Keeping track of all the random pills and dosage notes is not something he can manage.
We’ve got them currently set up to fit nicely into the 4 times a day pill dispenser. He has alarms on his iPad set to tell him ‘Hey take your medicine!’ but still without someone keeping an eye on things, mistakes are easy. I’ve seen him open a different day/time. I’ve seen him miss the alarm completely. I’ve seen him drop pills and not notice, thinking he put them in his mouth, etc. So while I still separate them into the daily portions to keep things easier for both of us, the real key is to make sure he gets the right ones at the right time.
One encouraging development: we just met with his new neurologist (since moving here) and she told us to stop taking one of the meds, reducing his daily pills to 20. Hopefully this reduction will help with the hallucinations. She was puzzled as to why he was taking it in the first place since the Parkinson’s symptom wasn’t one that was really manifesting with his mix of symptoms. I’m hopeful that this will be a positive change for his treatment, but it will likely take a week or two to have any sense of impact.