Day Six - Achieving Protection

[T-Plus 6 Days.]

Took my sixth pill last night, which means today is the sixth full day of Truvada (PrEP) in my system. This means that sometime between today and tomorrow, I should reach the peak level of Truvada in my system, and thus peak protection from HIV infection (current research suggests it takes about 5-7 days for the body to build up enough of the meds to provide maximum protection). So, um, woohoo! 

This is why keeping up my adherence is such a big deal though. I know I said it repeatedly in my last post, but I don't think I can emphasize enough how important it is to take my PrEP every single day. Because a level of the meds persists in my system for a while, I can miss a dose here and there and still be well-protected, especially once I've been taking it for a while. This is a good reminder that I don't have to freak out if I forget a dose from time to time, but it's not an excuse to be bad about my dosing! It's really easy to get "too busy" or whatever, but if I'm missing too much, then I'm not protected.

So I've taken up a couple of habits to try to keep my adherence up:

First off, I downloaded an app that helps me track my meds and my adherence. The one I opted for is called MediSafe, but there are loads of others (perhaps sometime soon I'll start assembling a list of other apps in the Resources tab).

Pictured below, MediSafe allows folks to do a number of things that help stay adherent. When you first open it, it asks for a list of your medications, as well as their dosing instructions. You can edit this list whenever you want, and it also lets you add medications you take "as-needed", such as aspirin or antacids. After that, you have your daily "pill box", which displays all of each day's medications, quartered off by time of day that they're supposed to be taken. Each medication that you take on a regular basis comes with a reminder, and those reminders can be customized; I personally love the Star Wars-themed "medtone". Over the course of time, MediSafe tracks your adherence, and it can generate reports in a couple formats (including Excel spreadsheets) that you can export and email to, say, your doctor.

MediSafe adherence tracking report.

The second thing I did was to make an emergency to-go bottle of my most important medications, so that I always have some doses with me - there's always the chance that I'll spend the night at somebody's place... or maybe work really late or something. I used a small pill bottle from an old prescription, and taped my own label over it with a list of the medications in there and their colors (I suppose that's a little bit obsessive, but I want to be sure that the pills aren't mistaken for something else if it's ever found by, say, airport security or something). You can see a picture of it below.

  

My emergency to-go medication bottle.

So that's it for now. I've been spot-on with adherence for the past week, and hopefully I'll stay that way. I had a couple of rough patches in the mornings on Friday and Saturday (I got pretty nauseous both mornings, but both days it went away within a few hours, and since then it's been getting easier each morning). I'll check in again soon. If you're reading this, please feel free to post comments and questions - I'd love to answer what I can!

Cheers, friends!