I just called my dad’s doctor to see if I can swap out the Tumms that he has been taking as a calcium supplement for just a standard over the counter calcium pill. There is no problem with that, and I discovered yet another small detail that I had not known about medications.

The assistant gal I talked to said that when taking a calcium supplement, the body will only absorb 500 mg at a time, so when taking over 500 mg of calcium you need to spread it out throughout the day so that the body can absorb the proper amount of prescribed calcium.

I got a phone call a few minutes ago from the pharmacy letting me know that there has been a recall by one of the manufacturers of Isosorb.  The recall was apparently voluntarily made by the manufacturer after it was discovered that some of the medications had pills which had fused together, creating a double-sized pill which could result in overdose on the medication.

While on the phone with the pharmacy I checked the pills that my dad has, just to be sure, and they’re all normal looking.   Once I was off the phone I was online, of course, checking out what the recall was all about.

The company that initiated the recall is the ETHEX Corporation and this is a nationwide recall of five specific lots of generic products that may have oversized tablets in them.

The recalled products are:

Propafenone HCl Tablets – 150 mg, 225 mg, and 300 mg
Isosorbide Mononitrate Extended Release Tablets – 30 mg and 60 mg
Morphine Sulfate Extended Release Tablets – 15 mg
Morphine Sulfate Immediate Release Tablets – 15 mg and 30 mg
Dextroamphetamine Sulfate Tablets – 10 mg

This is the official press release from the ETHEX Corporation detailing the affected drugs and the potential indicators of an overdose.

After reading that I was left wondering if what the pharmacy had told me was correct, if it was a case of looking for two pills that were fused together in the batch, or if it was a case of the wrong pills went in the wrong bottles.  I tried to call the ETHEX Corporation 1-800 number to find out, but I called a little too late, they had already closed today.  I then called the pharmacy and the way she described how the ETHEX Corporation rep that she had called explained it was “the pills were much larger, it was like taking two pills and fusing them together”.  Wait… that is what the press release indicated – where a 30 mg bottle has 60 mg pills in it, but the release looks like it means different pill, not literally two 30 mg pills that fused together.

I’m not satisfied with what I have determined so far, so I am going to call the ETHEX Corporation again tomorrow and ask for their official description of what the trouble is – I’ll share that with you all as soon as I find out.

For now, my best advice, if you believe that you might have got any of the above mentioned recalled medications check not just for did two of the pills fuse to one another – but check the pill against what the pill SHOULD look like using a pill identification guide or the official descriptions from the ETHEX Corporation’s press release (Images added by me from the Drugs.com pill identification guide):

The 150 mg Propafenone Hydrochloride Tablets is a white, scored round film coated tablet with “ETH” on one side and “331” with a bisect on the reverse. The 225 mg Propafenone Hydrochloride Tablets is a white, scored round film coated tablet with “ETH” on one side and “332” with a bisect on the reverse. The 300 mg Propafenone Hydrochloride Tablets is a white, scored round film coated tablet with “ETH” on one side and “333” with a bisect on the reverse.

The 30 mg Isosorbide Mononitrate Extended Release Tablet is an oval, reddish-pink, film-coated tablet with a debossed “E” bisecting “30” on one side and bisect on the other side. The 60 mg Isosorbide Mononitrate Extended Release Tablet is an oval, yellow film-coated tablet with a debossed “E” bisect “60” on one side and bisect on the other side.

 

The 15 mg Morphine Sulfate Extended Release Tablet is a green oval tablet with “15” on one side and an “E” on the reverse. The 15 mg Morphine Sulfate Immediate Release Tablet is a round brown tablet with a “15” on one side and an “ETH” on the reverse. The 30 mg Morphine Sulfate Immediate Release Tablet is a capsule shaped brown tablet with “30” on one side and an “ETHEX” on the reverse.

 

The 10 mg Dextroamphetamine Sulfate Tablet is a round, flat-face, bevel edge, orange mottled tablet debossed “ETHEX” and “312” on one side and double-scored on the other side.

[I could not find any images of Dextroamphetamine Sulfate at the Drugs.com website]

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Special thanks to Drugs.com for their pill identification guide which made it easier for me to help other family caregivers in identifying the affected drugs.  THANK YOU!

I was reading a short article in something the other day, think it was Women’s World maybe?, anyway, the article was saying that it is better to take aspirin in the evenings than in the morning when taking it as a prescription drug to treat high blood pressure.

That caught my attention, since my dad is on aspirin for high blood pressure treatment, so I went looking for more information.  Sure enough, a 2002 article at WebMD starts out with:

“Taking aspirin at the right time may be the key to preventing heart attacks, stroke, and even high blood pressure. The common yet potent drug works best at bedtime, a Spanish study shows.”

The suspicion is that the body absorbs the aspirin more readily when the medicine is taken in the morning, giving it a longer chance to work on lowering blood pressure if taken at night just before bedtime.

My dad has always been taking the aspirin in the mornings, since I had no idea it made any difference, but now that I see that maybe it does, I have changed him to an evening dose.