Micaela: Taking complementary medicines – The expense of complementary medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Micaela
Female
Age at interview: 38
Number of medicines: 21
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Micaela can feel the negative impact when she stops her complementary medicines, but she sometimes has no choice because of their high cost.
Like, sometimes I'll focus on the supplements. Sometimes when I'm depressed and I've, you know, slept through or whatever, I'll make sure that I do take the antidepressants, even if I haven't taken anything else, because as I mentioned to you, that's one of the ones I felt the impact of quite strongly.
Look, sometimes I've run out of supplements when I've ... and I either haven't had enough money or haven't had the opportunity to replace them, so I've gone without some of the supplements for several days. I tend to write them off a bit more. There are some that I've noticed ... if I haven't been taking zinc, for example, if I've run out of zinc, instantly my nails get those white spots and my skin isn't as good. Something will break out on my skin.
Fish oil I find helps keep me regular, so if I've run out of that, I do find that I'm a bit more constipated than usual. If I'm not taking vitamin C, if I haven't been taking vitamin C for a few days, I notice that I get, not like a cold sore exactly, but I get cracked corners of my lips or corners of my mouth, I should say.
So there's some that you notice the withdrawal of and sometimes I feel I can be a bit slap-dash with that, but I mean ... supplements are very expensive and, you know, with a reduced income, sometimes there are days when I just haven't been able to afford to top them up.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.