PILLS!

Every morning at 7:30 my Blackberry buzzes and the screen reminds me "PILLS!".
I take 3 pills in the morning and one in the evening before bed.
Morning:

Prasugrel, this is a blood thinner. It keeps clots from forming in my stents. Realistically I'm one clot away from dead. My first month was free thanks to the good folks at Eli Lilly, I've about finished that first month so we'll find out how good my insurance really is...

Hydrochlorothiazide, also called HCTZ, this is a "water pill" which lowers my blood pressure. I'm currently taking 25mg but I think the next time I see my doc we'll see about pushing this back to 12mg since my BP is running at normal or just below.

Asprin, good old acetylsalicylic acid originally derived from willow bark. Another blood thinner, its also anti-inflammatory and fortunately my stomach tolerates it well.

Evening:
Simvastatin, statins are cholesterol lowering. I'm at 40mg which I'm given to understand is a lot. My last cholesterol test was 150 which is very low, normal people can be around 200, us stent patients want to be down around 170. Unfortunately my good cholesterol is very low too at 24, it wants to be more like 70 I guess... With luck added exercise will bring that number up, my last cholesterol test was 1 week after surgery so I hadn't been exercising at all, in fact I'd been actively avoiding exercise...

So thats the pharmaceutical team at work keeping me alive. Of the 4 meds the really important one is prasugrel, the docs all say something like "Keep taking the blood thinner until taken off it by your cardiologist or God". As a friend said the first you shouldn't argue with and the second you can't...