Gordon: Problems with multiple medicines (I) – Side effects
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Gordon
Male
Age at interview: 73
Number of medicines: 13
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Gordon feels that his medicines ‘build up’ in his system and make him unwell. His GP agrees that seems to be the case, but none of his doctors can explain what is happening.
I find, and the doctors ... my local GP agrees with me ... that there's a period of time when I'm taking these tablets, that my system gets used to it and it builds up and rejects, and that's when I feel crook. Some days, I can't walk to the post box and back. Or I go shopping in town and I've got to stop and sit down for an hour. Other days, I can walk all around town and it doesn't worry me. It's put down ... the bleeding as well, has been put down to the same thing. It's a build-up in the system and the system takes so much and then ... whether it's right or wrong, I don't know. My own doctors wouldn't pass judgement on it either.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.