Glenn: Travelling with multiple medicines – Medicines mistakes and accidents whilst travelling
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Glenn
Male
Age at interview: 50
Number of medicines: 6
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Glenn once had a job away from home that unexpectedly needed more time. He did not have enough medicine with him, which had an impact on his work and could have had serious consequences for his health.
Glenn:
I went to Tamworth and was supposed to only be there for the day. The job went wrong and I was there for three days. I said, ‘I have to go to the hospital or a doctor’. A doctor would not … I went to a doctor, he would not prescribe the medication. I went to the emergency room at the hospital. They then, because of the lithium [a medicine used for bipolar disorder] and that, they then referred me to mental health and a psychiatrist came down. He wrote out a script for the next two days for the medications that I needed. I went to the pharmacist and the pharmacist said, ‘I can't fill this, we cannot split tablets like that. We can't just give you a strip out of a box.’ In the end, I ended up with full boxes of tablets for the price of only six tablets. But it took about four and a half hours out of my day to actually go and do that.
Jacqueline:
What were the consequences of that?
Glenn:
The consequence was losing time. I was running the job, so that was okay. I could do that, but I should have been there, but my health was more important. The consequences of staying on the job and not worrying about the tablets would have meant that I would have started bouncing back and up and down again, particularly with the bipolar, and my depression would have gone down, not taking the testosterone. I suppose as equally important is the Crestor [rosuvastatin], a medicine that lowers cholesterol levels in the body]. I tend not to be too concerned about missing something for one day, like the Crestor for one day. But the others I won’t. I can't afford not to … stop taking them.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.