Sue: Problems with multiple medicines (I) – Side effects (1)
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Sue
Female
Age at interview: 65
Number of medicines: 16
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Sue needed to take a medicine for which the long-term side effects made the impact of her other conditions worse.
Sue:
Of all of them that … I hate prednisone.
Jacqueline:
Why's that?
Sue:
Because of the side effects. I've already got a cataract out of it from ... because the third episode, as I said, took a long time and I was on prednisone for a year. I've got a cataract in my left eye from it and I've lost significant amounts of calcium to the point that my bone ... one of my vertebrae's borderline osteoporotic already because of the prolonged loss. As I say, it's compounded because the liver condition causes calcium loss and then the prednisone on top. And I really didn't want to go on it but I had no choice. I tried to persuade them to put me back on ciclosporin when the haemolytic anaemia developed, but they said no, prednisone is the first drug of choice, that's what you're going on.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.