Emma: Problems with multiple medicines (I) – Ineffective medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Emma
Female
Age at interview: 41
Number of medicines: 19
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Emma and her doctors hoped that midodrine, a medicine for low blood pressure, would also slow her heart rate. When that did not work, she was prescribed an additional medicine that came with a number of risks.
The midodrine, which I'm still currently taking. So that one is for ... actually it's for orthostatic hypotension, so low blood pressure. We thought that may be bringing up the blood pressure, might slow down the heart rate. But it wasn’t doing everything we wanted it to do. So it probably dropped a little bit but not significantly enough to make me feel normal. So I guess that was why we started the Coralan, I think. We didn’t go near ... you've got to be careful with beta blockers and things like that because that actually can speed up the heart rate, drop blood pressure. So the cardiologist ... she had to think. There were a lot of ... these are quite new drugs. So she thought it was worth taking the risk just to see.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.