Sue: The attitudes of others – Taking ‘many’ medicines (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 is less concerned about the questions people ask now compared to when she first began taking a number of medicines. It helps that people close to her know and understand her situation.
Well, if I'm ... certainly early on it was because I'd feel self-conscious sitting there taking all these tablets because there might be 10 of them, I might be taking quite a few and sort of feeling people say, oh what's wrong, why are you … and you've got to explain it all again to people. But as I say, I think now ... and I think that's still an issue if I'm meeting with people ... I'm sharing a meal with people who I don't know particularly well.
Sometimes people will comment and I don't really feel like going through it again, you know, why I've got to take them all. But with people I know well they don't even notice it any more than I do, I don't think … I mean generally people are, I think, perhaps curious and, not concerned so much, but I mean I don't think ... they're not being nasty about it. They're just ... you're taking a lot of tablets, what's wrong? Then you've got that question of how well do I know this person? Do I want to go into the history, do they really want to know that since 1999 I've had this condition, et cetera, et cetera, and make a decision.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.