PT: How people feel – What multiple medicines signifies
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
PT
Male
Age at interview: 49
Number of medicines: 7
Cultural background: Indian
PT regards the start of lifelong medicines as a different stage of life which has an impact on everything.
PT:
Although it's true, but it's also sad, that you link medications with your life. It's one of the sad parts of having a problem and having to take medications is that they are somehow inextricably linked with your life and, when I say your life, with your family, with your house, with your job ... absolutely with the relation ... everything. What was the question again, I think I've gone off ...
Jacqueline:
What have been the most significant disadvantages to taking a number of medicines?
PT:
I mean, most of my answers are all philosophical. They're not … I don't know whether they'll appeal to anybody, but I think, for me, that's the biggest and somehow that they are … it goes against my feeling for myself and for my life and my beliefs. It's absolutely ... because I always thought that there are other things more important and higher and something that you should be dependent on, rather than what I found now is medication. So, when you become more dependent on medication, you lose the importance for several other things, which are actually the highest things that you have to aim for and be with, have value for and have importance for in your life. That's how it is affecting me. Of course, we lose ... spend something on it as well, which hurts. Other than that, it’s good for you, you have to take it.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.