Emma: Starting and changing medicines – Complex medication regimes (2)

Emma
Female
Age at interview: 41
Number of medicines: 19
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian

Emma has found it challenging to take her medicines when she is about to have surgery. She has since discussed this with an anaesthetist and now knows what to do with her current medicines.

So I guess when you're like fasting for surgery or having, especially orthopaedic surgery, I might have to stop particular things for a couple of weeks before. So that's mainly anti-inflammatories if you're having joint surgery. I find the hardest thing is when they make you fast before surgery. So I wasn’t actually taking any drugs. Because I've got so many medicines and they like you to have an empty stomach, I wasn’t taking anything before my surgery. So it was actually a problem like when I woke up from the anaesthetic.

So the anaesthetist has told me which ones that I should be taking before my surgery and which ones I can take after. So it took probably maybe until my fourth anaesthetic before I got the guts to ask because I was generally feeling quite lousy after it. Yes, they've sort of sorted it out now. You take this, like the particular ones and which ones aren’t so important. They always make sure you take your painkillers just because you're going to wake up in pain anyway. They do actually make sure that you take reflux medications just in case of nausea.

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The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.