Diana: How people feel – Long-term impact of multiple medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Diana
Female
Age at interview: 22
Number of medicines: 13
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Diana is in the habit of taking her medicines but she feels that there is no real plan behind the medicines she is taking. She thinks that each addition to her regimen is quite arbitrary and she reached a point where she felt like she was taking too many.
Diana:
Routine-wise it wasn't too bad because I would just take them all at the same time, apart from when I started the Oroxine, which I take of a morning, all the others I just take of a night. So just open them all up, line them up and go for it [laughs] which doesn't work well when you start choking on them, which I do quite regularly. But to get them into a routine, it wasn't too bad, it was more the mental side effect of, oh that's another medication. There’s no treatment plan, it's just take this, hope for the best. It would fit into routine quite easy, it just would take a toll on me and the family as well, because they'd be like, you're on another one?
Jacqueline:
At what point did the number of medicines start to become a problem? Was there a particular number where it really started to bother you? Or the whole time?
Diana:
I think I was always slightly not comfortable with being on medication, especially long term, but when it got to the point that I was taking three tablets of the Lovan, one of the Seroquel, four of Diabex, a Nexium and I wasn't feeling any better, it really started to make a difference, in my mind, of that is a hell of a lot.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.