Both Grendel and Loki have to take inhaled steroids for their asthma.  Loki takes it twice each day and Grendel takes it once every other day.  Unlike Grendel’s systemic steroids where I can see how many are left in the bottle and know when I’m running low and need to get a refill, the inhaler has 120 doses but no way to tell how many have been used or how many are left.  That means I have to track it so I know when it’s running out and a refill is needed.

Instead of doing the simple thing and figuring out that 120 doses would last 48 days, and given that I could schedule a reminder every 48 days to get a refill and to swap the inhaler, I created a spreadsheet—a spreadsheet!—where I was tracking each dose used.

I can be so stupid sometimes.  A spreadsheet is an awfully unwieldy way to track something that predictable.  Yet for the last few weeks I’ve religiously popped that spreadsheet open twice per day to update it.  What was I smoking?  Or what should I have been smoking?

In either case, this morning I had an epiphany.  Well, it was more like a V8 moment.  All I know is I smacked myself in the head while watching Excel take forever to load (and on a fast laptop too, which tells you what kind of bloatware it is).  I immediately did the math for the schedule based on how many doses were already used, and now I’ll get a reminder 10 days before it runs out and will know precisely when to buy a refill and when to swap the canister.

Duh!