Karen: Starting and changing medicines – The need to change medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Karen
Female
Age at interview: 37
Number of medicines: 8
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Karen needed to try many medicines and combinations of medicines for pain relief. Nothing worked well for very long. She has since found a compromise between pain control and being able to function.
It kind of started off with … like, the first time I hurt my back, I'd been on Panadeine Forte and Nurofen and I was only on Endone for less than a week. In that 12 months, I gradually got down to just the Panadol and/or Nurofen, but then it got worse again. So it sort of started off with ... I was trying just sort of Panadeine and Nurofen Plus and then I think I tried an anti-inflammatory, Mobic, I think, first up and that had absolutely no effect at all. So I stopped taking the Nurofen, because if something stronger than that didn't work, then why would the Nurofen? I guess it just started at the Panadeine Forte and then, I think, Endone, then we started with the lowest dose of the Tramal and my doctor ... I remember she gave me a sample pack and said, ‘Look, try this before you fill the script, because for some people it's great, and for some people it doesn't work at all.’ I found some people I know have had major hallucinations on it, so I can understand why ... but I haven't had any of that.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.