Let’s talk about pill splitting. Sometimes you don’t want to take your full dose for some reason, or sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a higher dose than you really need and then split the pills. At some point, half blind from a migraine at 2am searching for the half that shot off the counter when you were cutting a pill with a knife, you thought there had to some better way to do this. And lo! On your next trip to the pharmacy, the pill splitter section is pointed out to you.
My very first pill splitter
This was way better than a knife. First of all, there was no danger of chopping my fingertips off. Secondly, it catches the pill in a little compartment. Unfortunately, it’s not that great at cutting pills exactly in half, especially convex round ones. Sometimes I get a 30/70 split or a 40/60 split. Sometimes it just sort of smushes the pill.
Some medications have a fair amount of wiggle room in the dose. Others put you to sleep for 4 hours when you get it just a little wrong. I went back to the knife and chasing pills across the floor.
That is the best pill splitter my pharmacy offers*, so I have been doing some online research. Perhaps this one, which comes with “12 different inserts so it can safely & easily cut pills & tablets of almost any shape” and would also complete my doll house washroom?
Possible new pill splitter type
So, fellow people who see their pharmacist more than their boss, what are your tips and tricks for pill splitting? Do you need different pill splitters for different pills? Do you have a favorite splitter?
* In case you are thinking of buying this ubiquitous model: After surprisingly little use (~50 splits), some plastic bits have fallen off and the blue pill guides are uneven. It didn’t do perfectly even splits before, but now it’s really bad. I did not do violent things to this pill splitter.