I am, as most of you know, taking multiple medications AND multiple dietary supplements in my fight against Parkinson’s Disease (PD). This of course means that I am handling a variety of pill bottles, featuring a variety of anti-tamper / safety seals. But I’ve discovered an industry secret: These seals are not actually designed to protect you. They are designed to make you drop the pill bottle at the exact moment the seal pops off, so that they spill all over the place, causing you to lose half of them so that you have to buy more. But not all of them are like that. Some bottles don’t spill because a cotton ball has been stuffed in on top of the pills. This cotton ball cannot be removed by anyone with PD tremors or really anyone with full-grown fingers. I believe the drug / supplement companies are trying to get children interested in pills at an early age. Think about it: a cap that is supposedly child-proof (what kid isn’t going to see that as a challenge?) followed by a cotton ball that requires child-size fingers to remove.

For the longest time, I handled the “safety seals” by stabbing them with either a steak knife or a car key – whichever was handy. As for the cotton balls, I would always fumble around trying to pin a substantial amount of the cotton between one finger and the inner wall of the bottle, then keep it pinned as I tried to slide it up to where I could get a second finger involved. With some bottles, this could take months.

It wasn’t until surprisingly recently that it occurred to me I should employ some kind of tool to remove the cotton ball. My first thought was needle-nose pliers. But I know where those have been. So…no. Don’t ask, just know it’s no. So, I thought to myself, “What’s a smaller (and hopefully more sanitary) version of needle-nose pliers?” The answer: tweezers! I retrieved the one pair of tweezers that I own, and set to work on a newly opened bottle of pramipexole. To my great delight, they removed the cotton ball with ease. On top of that, they turned out to be the ideal seal-stabber. Since I could be just about anywhere when the need to open a new medication or supplement bottle arises, I added tweezers to my packing list. And thus we have the latest PD Travel Tip.

PD Travel Tip: Pack tweezers.