Jan: Adjusting to multiple medicines – Positive outcomes that help people adjust
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Jan
Female
Age at interview: Undisclosed
Number of medicines: 15
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Jan used to contract lung infections regularly due to her condition and sometimes needed to be hospitalised. She has since learned to manage her condition to prevent infections becoming more serious.
Medicine has been critical, particularly in managing the bronchiectasis and the asthma. I used to get a significant amount of mucus before those conditions were diagnosed and managed and it would mean that, in a conversation with somebody,
I would have to excuse myself and that was often quite inappropriate. One of my volunteer jobs now involves a lot of chatting to people and you just simply can't keep saying, ‘Excuse me, I've just got to step out for a moment.’
So, the medications have been quite critical to me leading a normal life today and, in fact, when ... I was actually thinking I was going to have to early retire before I was appropriately medicated for the bronchiectasis and the asthma, because once again, I was in a job where I was at a lot of meetings and I would have to keep leaving the room, because of the amount of mucus that was building up quite rapidly.
And that just doesn't occur now. In fact, my respiratory surgeon, when I last saw him, asked me if I would be involved in a study and, of course, I said, ‘Yes.’ He then asked me questions about the amount of mucus I was getting currently and how it was impacting on my life and when we'd finished that discussion, he said, ‘We can't have you in the study. You're too well!’ which was very pleasing, but it was also directly as a result of his treatment and the medications he's got me on.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.