Time to check your elderly parents' medicine cabinet

Digging through my mom's medicine cabinet to find some Tylenol. I found Tylenol but it expired sometime in the last century. Same thing with a bunch of Sudafed, Alka-Seltzer Cold and several other meds. Scarier still? A big bunch of sample packets of a Vioxx type medication (Bextra) that was recalled a couple years ago when they recalled the Vioxx. All in all, I've got over 100 different pills of various sorts some with expiration dates going back into the early 90s. Even assuming they deliberately leave room for error in the shelf life of medication, when it's 14 years past it's expiration date I think it's potentially pretty dangerous.

Humbly suggesting maybe you should check up on what's in your elderly parents' medicine cabinets and make sure they're not hoarding expired or recalled drugs. Maybe I'm over reacting but this is scary to me.

Usually medicine becomes ineffective, not harmful. After the date has passed. She needs to get to a doctor ASAP, And this thread should be locked.

On edit:

I think the op's post is very informative, as I have found a similar problem w/my Mom & my own med cabinet.

The OP is correct and FYI, pills do not necessarily lose effectiveness just because they've expired. Most are good at least a year beyond expiration and they do change chemically and can be very harmful.

Elderly parents need help and I thank the OP for bringing it up.

makes no sense.

hoping for answer...

We found stuff like that in my parents medicine chest as well. We ended up finding aspirin that expired in the 70's. It was a mess. Thanks for the Public service announcement!

My father died almost three years ago from Cancer and Alzheimer's. He was taking 17 pills a day which my stepmother dispensed for him. I recently discovered that she kept all my father's medicine which was left over after he died. And some of that stuff is pretty powerful meds. She said she didn't know what to do with it, bless her heart. We got rid of the stuff for her. It was in her medicine cabinet mixed in with her meds. She's 82. I perish to think that she could have taken some of his cancer pain medicince by mistake.

I went through the meds with my mom this morning and showed her this bottle in particular. We calculated that it's been packed up and moved at least 5 times since its expiration date. She admitted to me that it would never have occurred to her to check expiration dates. I know drugs are expensive and I suspect they don't necessarily go bad when the label says they go bad but 32 years expired!?! Needless to say, we went through her whole cabinet and checked the labels on everything.

I'm not sure why someone suggested this thread be locked. I'm just trying to share my experience in the hopes that it's helpful to someone else. Nobody TOOK any expired medication. There was no immediate danger, just a potential danger and, as I also stated, maybe I'm over reacting but I think it goes to show that we need to look out for our parents. If that's wrong, then lock the damned thread.

I don't think I've even ever heard of Tums liquid before

I went through their kitchen a year or so ago and threw out things they'd had for decades. There was a bottle of Texas Pete that was tan and was at LEAST fifteen years old. :yoiks: There were cans that were bulging and stuff in the fridge that had expiration dates at least eight years old. :puke: My MIL will save tiny little bits of food, less than a biteful, and wrap them in either foil or plastic wrap for "later." I threw out half a trash can full of those "later" bites, and most of them had been in there anywhere from one to five years.

My FIL is a retired pharmacist, and he had TONS of expired meds hanging around. For some reason, he had cases of samples of Levitra and Cialis---he's 81, and my MIL is 78. They had expired, but I guess he thought they'd come in handy. :shrug: He heard some effed-up rumor in the late 80s that expired birth control pills made good plant food (I have NO idea where that came from), so he had a shitload of expired birth control pill packages in a cabinet. (I'm guessing about four gross...:yoiks:) I got rid of everything that wasn't current and that wasn't something they used. Both my FIL and MIL take several meds each on a daily basis, and I didn't want them to get things confused.

I did this while they were out of town, and I didn't tell them I did it. And guess what? They never noticed. :P I probably saved them from themselves. :yoiks:

of his wife when there were leftovers one evening, "Do you want to put this in the 'fridge and throw it out later or should I just throw it out now?"

ocassionally find expired things in my own cabinet.

the company addresses are pre-zip code. Who keeps this stuff around for +/- 45 years????

you could sell it or somethin'?

:shrug:

And their canned goods in their cabinets too. I tried to throw a lot of stuff away when I was caring for my grandmother but she wouldn't let me because there was 'nothing wrong with it.' One huge can of mixed vegetables that I knew was old but she insisted be left in the cabinent...once when my uncle was there I asked him about it and he said it had been there since he had come home from the Navy which had been at least twenty years. I slowly snuck that old stuff out and threw it out, little by little.

My mom was dealing with a couple of health problems, for which she had to take prescription meds. Well, my mom is very independent, and she didn't want anyone watching over her shoulder like she was a child. That was all well and good, until one day, while I was on the phone with her, she stopped responding to me. My mom lives almost 300 miles from me, so I couldn't just take a quick run over to her house.

I tried to call my siblings who all live close to her, but couldn't get hold of anyone. I was scared to pieces, and thought of calling 911 in her town, to have someone go check on her. Just before I did, I tried calling her back, and she answered. She said she had dozed off.

It happened again about a month later. This time, I was able to reach my sisters, who went over to check on her. They started looking at all her meds (they are both in the medical profession), and were alarmed at the combination of things she was taking. The next day, one of my sisters went over to moms, put all the meds in a bag, and took them, and mom, to her primary physician. Mom had several doctors, and unfortunately, they were not communicating with each other very well. Turns out mom was taking some things she should not be taking any longer; others were not good in combination.

The primary physician sorted everything out, got everything adjusted, and within 48 hours, mom was clear-headed again. It was freakin' scary, though, me yelling into the phone, and her not responding.

So, in addition to checking for expired meds (both prescription and OTC), if you or someone you know is on multiple meds, it might be a good idea to have a "med check-up" periodically, so this kind of thing doesn't happen to someone else.

But I did find a can of Campbells Cream of Asparagus soup that had expired in February 1990.

with my mom. I took the expired stuff back to the pharmacy because it's not good to flush pills into the sewer system. I've had to fill her med cassette. i didn't get back down before the week was up and she tried to fill it herself. What a mess. I can't take her word anymore because she is so forgetful.