Peter S: Adjusting to multiple medicines – Positive outcomes that help people adjust
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Peter S
Male
Age at interview: 60
Number of medicines: 18
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Peter S used to use hypodermic syringes to inject animal-based insulin. Now he uses an insulin pump containing human-based insulin, which is far more convenient.
The pump was good because with the job I had it made it easier. I didn't have to keep carrying around syringes and keep carrying like a little mini esky to keep the insulin cold and so forth, because insulin nowadays is a lot more resistant to heat than it was back then because it was then pig-based rather than man-made based. The pump made a huge difference to my life. It's one less … I still have to think about it. I mean you don't just switch off. You've still got to do your blood sugar, you've still got to enter it all into the machine and everything else and you've got to change the set, but it's not as probably tedious as trying to find out an injection site in your belly that hasn't been used a million times before, which is one reason why I love … if I ever win Lotto, get the monitoring sets because that way my fingers would be rescued from continual jabs and so forth.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.