Helen: Adjusting to multiple medicines – Adapting day-to-day life
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Helen
Female
Age at interview: 58
Number of medicines: 10
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Helen has had to make some changes to her daily routine that are less than desirable.
Well it certainly has, when part of what I take has to be taken after I eat something. Because my routine is to take medication as soon as I get up … get it out of the way basically.
I don't eat as soon as I get up, so I've had to break my morning medication into two parts. So I take some of it … actually I've broken it into three parts. Some of it as soon as I wake up, so that it has time to be effective. Another bit as soon as I get up, because that's what I'm used to, and if I don't do that, I might forget. Then another part after I've had something to eat. So what used to be one lot of medication in the morning has now become three different lots. What that does mean occasionally is that I might forget something.
So yeah, I … yeah, that happens. I do occasionally forget. Or it will mean that I eat more than I should be … that I would like to be eating, first thing in the morning because of the association of one of the medications with being taken after food. So yeah, two changes. Yeah, two big changes. One potentially eating more, and the other one, setting up a routine that could possibly mean I forget to take something.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.