Mia: Family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances – Telling people about their medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Mia
Female
Age at interview: 30
Number of medicines: 12
Cultural background: Israeli-Australian
People often learn about Mia’s condition by seeing her take medicines. She has found that others seem to identify her by her illness, which she does not want.
The rest of them, I guess, it's just the biggest effect I have found with friends that I have told is that they become more preoccupied by it than me. ‘Oh, do you have to take your medication?’ I'm like ‘I will deal with it later’. Or, ‘How are you going with your Crohn's?’ I am like, ‘Huh?’ It's not a prominent part of my life but once you tell people it's a large part of what they see about you, which makes me keep it a little quieter because it's not how I want to be seen, as a person whose life revolves around their illness or around their medication.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.