Diana: The attitudes of others – Taking ‘many’ medicines (3)
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Diana
Female
Age at interview: 22
Number of medicines: 13
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Diana devised ways of hiding her medicines when she was out with difficult friends.
Diana:
A lot of the lies I used covered up enough that people stopped asking questions. Or I'd go, ‘Oh I'm just going to go to the bathroom’, take the medications. So I found pockets were my best friend. But thankfully most of my medications are once a day or at home. When we were away on trips a few times with friends, it did make it difficult because it's like, well how can I hide this?
Jacqueline:
How did you hide it?
Diana:
Very big bags. [laughs] Isn't a handbag a woman's best friend? Well, my friends would have theirs for makeup and mine would be for medication. But I'd have makeup bags for my medications, so I used different tricks like that to work around it.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.