Glenn: Family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances – Telling people about their medicines
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 thinks it is important that people he works and lives with are well-informed of all of the aspects of his conditions.
People around you. The people that you live with definitely have to know about it. A very good example, when I started taking my medications earlier I was working in Canberra. A guy that I'd never known before ... he worked for the same company and we'd come together. I'd come from Newcastle, but he was living in Canberra. We became very, very good friends. He knew of my issues and my problems. He would come up to me ... if he was seeing that I was having a bad day, or a down day, he'd come up and go, Glenn, have you taken the medication today? I'd go, no, thank you, or yes, I have, I'm just frustrated about this. He was almost like a bit of a back-up for me. So having somebody who is aware of what happens to you when you don’t take them.
Now the person that I share with does exactly the same thing. She will often come up to me and say, have you taken your medication? No, I haven't. Go and take it. Because they can often see the subtle changes in your mood or personality that you don't pick up. It is ... there's nothing wrong with having people that you care about, and care about you, knowing what medications you take, so that if something does go wrong they can be there and help you.
My housemate knows where all my scripts are kept at the pharmacy; she knows where all my medications are in the house. If she needs to bring them to me, she can. Fortunately that hasn't happened, but it's just something that is an emergency, I suppose, back-stop. People looking out for you is a great thing. But usually it's because I'm frustrated with something, that they can often misinterpret the frustration as being you starting to drop in mood and so forth. But as long as I'm honest back ... it doesn't work unless I'm honest back. If I haven't taken them and I say, oh, yeah, I've taken them, that's not going to help me … That is so important, it really is. To be able to ... and it is giving permission to somebody. It's not just saying, oh if you think I’m not well just tell me. But it's, if you think that I haven't taken my medication or you see a big difference in me, come and ask me. That worked well, it worked for me and, you know, it should work for most people. But just finding that right person and don't take it the wrong way if ... when they say it to you because you've given them that permission to do that.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.