Medications
When your parent's medication list keeps growing, it is hard to know what is essential and what is leftover. Practical guides for building a clean med list, spotting interactions to flag, and walking into the pharmacy with a real plan.
Aging Sidekick helps family caregivers get organized and find their next step — at their own pace.
The Caregiver's Guide to Managing Your Parent's Medications
A plain-language guide for the family caregiver who has become the unofficial medication manager — how to build the master list, run an annual review with the doctor, pick the right daily dosing tool, decode a pharmacy label, spot side effects that look like dementia, and keep the list right through a hospital stay and a dementia diagnosis.
What is polypharmacy — and why it's dangerous after 75
Polypharmacy is the medical term for taking many medications at once — and it is the single most common medication-safety issue for adults over seventy-five. Here is what the term actually means, why the risk climbs with age, and the questions to bring to the next doctor visit.
The Beers List: medications older adults shouldn't take
The Beers Criteria is the geriatrics field's plain-language consensus on which medications carry extra risk for adults over sixty-five. Here is what the list is, what it is not, and how to bring it into the next appointment without making the doctor defensive.
Pill organizers, automatic dispensers, and what actually works
The shelves are full of pill organizers, locked dispensers, and app-connected gadgets. Here is the honest tour of what each kind actually does, who it tends to work for, and how to match the tool to the parent rather than the marketing.
How to read a pharmacy bottle (and what the codes mean)
A pharmacy bottle holds more information than most families realize — the drug name, the strength, the dosing schedule, the prescriber, the refill window, the warning stickers, and the small codes that tell you whether this is the same medication as the one in last month's bottle.
When to push back on a new prescription
A new prescription is rarely just a new bottle — it is a small but real change in the medication picture, and it sometimes deserves a calm second question before the parent starts taking it. Here is when to push back, how to push back without offending the prescriber, and the four questions that surface the answers families need.
Medication side effects that look like dementia (but aren't)
Some medications produce confusion, memory loss, or new agitation that looks for all the world like dementia — but is reversible when the medication changes. Here is the plain-language tour of the categories families and clinicians watch for, and how to surface the question with the doctor.
Why your parent's blood pressure med might be too aggressive
Blood-pressure targets that worked at fifty are not always the right targets at eighty-five. Here is the plain-language guide to why over-treatment is common in older adults, what to track at home, and the questions to bring to the next doctor visit.
How to use MyChart without losing your mind
MyChart is the patient portal a majority of U.S. health systems use, and it is both the family caregiver's best friend and a frequent source of frustration. Here is the practical tour — how to get access for a parent, what to use it for, and what to give up on.
Switching from Medisafe? Here's what changes.
Medisafe is a long-running medication-reminder app many families have used for years. In January 2026 Medisafe moved most of its core features behind a paid subscription, prompting many families to look at alternatives. Here is what changes when you switch, the data you should export first, and what to look for in a replacement.
The medication review every senior should get every year
Once a year, every older adult on three or more medications benefits from a structured medication review — a sit-down where someone with a clinician's eye looks at the whole list together. Here is what the review is, who can run it, and how the family prepares.