Linda: Problems with multiple medicines (I) – Side effects (2)
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Linda
Female
Age at interview: 53
Number of medicines: 5
Cultural background: British
Linda has been on a new medicine for Crohn’s disease for one week. She finds it also seems to relieve menopausal hot flushes.
Great! The new medicine is great, because I'm taking it properly, I guess. Well, I'm not taking it with food. Maybe a little bit of food, maybe a couple of bites of banana or a bite of fruit, but not … much food, not proper breakfast. But it's certainly alleviated my symptoms and it's cured my hot flushes, so I don't have to take ... at the moment anyway, I don't have to take HRT, which is great! … If I could choose to cure the hot flushes or the arthritic pains, I would definitely go with the hot flushes, because they were just ... they were the most disabling symptom I had.
Certainly, for the last couple of years, the medication I've been on has really done very little to control them and I've continued taking it, hoping, thinking they'll just be worse if I stop taking them, which they probably would. But this medication, I haven't had any in a week. It's amazing! Absolutely amazing! That's made a huge difference to me, so it's kind of difficult to know whether it's the control of the Crohn's disease or the loss of the hot flushes that makes me feel so much better.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.