Emma: The attitudes of others – Taking ‘many’ medicines (1)
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 stopped taking one of her medicines after her father made repeated comments about the number of medicines she took. The outcome was quite good for that medicine, but it is not something she would be willing to do with other medicines.
It's mainly my family. My friends ... they're all pretty understanding. So my mum, she's good. But my dad is just like, oh my goodness, you're like a grandmother. You take so many tablets and then, yes, sometimes like, you know, maybe you'd be okay if you stopped taking some of them. I actually have stopped taking one of my drugs just to see how I'd go. I used to be on 600 mg of Epilim and I've cut down by 100 only because of things ... you know, people who say things like that. I thought, okay, I'll give it a go, even though I know you shouldn’t do that kind of thing. Actually, I've been okay on the 500 so that's pretty good ... He'll just have a go at me occasionally. He'll just look at them when I go and see him and see them all sitting there. Yes, I think actually I probably have told him I had stopped one but I just wouldn’t stop any of the others because just I know myself that it's not sensible.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.