How I learned to pay attention to medicine expiration dates

“You sound terrible,” my friend told me. She was correct.

I was in my sixth week of a dry, wheezing cough. A cold I caught from one of my children quickly became an upper respiratory infection that terribly exacerbated my asthma.

I was diagnosed with asthma in 2023, so I was still navigating how to manage it properly. But something I was sure of was that if I was having trouble breathing or found myself in a coughing fit, I could use my inhaler.

However, with three asthmatics in the house, all with the same type of inhaler, it’s easy for the inhalers to get mixed up or lost. Both my oldest daughter, whom we lovingly call Ladybug, and my youngest son have the same kind of asthma I have, and I was aware that my inhaler gets swiped when they can’t find their own.

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To add to some of the “Whose inhaler is this?” confusion, Ladybug often receives a new temporary inhaler during hospital visits. Over the past few years, this practice has caused us to rack up many of them, which are then neatly placed in the medicine cabinet. That, in turn, often gets raided when our kids lose their inhalers.

I wasn’t worried, though. I had my inhaler. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working.

By week eight, I could barely make it through sentences, and my husband insisted I go to my pulmonologist. After prescribing me new maintenance medication, my doctor gave me a new inhaler. When I used it, I felt instant relief. I was immediately confused. I’d spent weeks using my old inhaler with little to no relief. Why was the same medication working now?

I carefully examined my old inhaler when I got home. To my surprise, the inhaler I thought was mine had expired in 2022. Not only was it not my inhaler, but the medication’s efficacy was null.

I suspect that somehow, in an inhaler mix-up, mine was switched with an old one from the medicine cabinet. Had I been more observant, I would have realized I wasn’t getting any medicine — and hadn’t been for almost two months.

It’s a lesson I’m glad I learned on myself.

When Ladybug was officially diagnosed with hereditary angioedema in 2021, we had to learn a lot about medications in a short period of time. One of the most important lessons was how to constitute her preventive and emergency medications. During that process, the nurses explained that the medicine wouldn’t be as effective if it wasn’t mixed properly.

Because of this, I would painstakingly ensure that all her medicine was properly stored, mixed well, and administered carefully. However, I never considered looking at the dates. We use the medicine so frequently that we’ve never had to worry about whether it’s expired.

After my own experience, in those times we have several months of no flares or prodromes, I now know to double-check the dates to ensure that the medication we have on hand will still be effective.

We’ve since removed older prescriptions from the medicine cabinet and educated everyone in the house to use their own prescribed devices.

Keeping your loved ones’ medicine up to date ensures its efficacy and gives them a chance to manage their illness as best they can.

Note: Angioedema News is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The opinions expressed in this column are not those of Angioedema News or its parent company, Bionews, and are intended to spark discussion about issues pertaining to angioedema.