Karen: Adjusting to multiple medicines – ‘Getting used to the idea’ of taking multiple medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Karen
Female
Age at interview: 37
Number of medicines: 8
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Karen lost self-confidence and would ask colleagues to check that what she had written for her thesis had not been affected by the medicines she was taking.
Karen:
My Master's degree ended up taking on a whole new meaning, because it was the only thing that I didn't quit because of my back. I went from working full-time to only working two days a week. I went from being very active, being involved in a camera club, in Girl Guides, in a bushwalking club and all of that is now ... I'm not involved in any of that stuff anymore. I just ... with the back pain and just being tired all the time from that, I had to give all of those up, so the Master's took me longer than I'd planned, but I finished it which was the important thing. But yeah ... it took on a whole meaning of its own, because it was the only thing that I didn't feel like that I'd given up on because of it.
Jacqueline:
Given how important it was to keep the Master's going, I'm wondering if that had any impact on the decisions you might have made around the medicines that they were suggesting to you?
Karen:
Um … yeah. Had I not been … that was one of the things especially … writing up my final thesis and stuff, there were a few times where I would give the paper different sort of … all the sitting around, just to check that I wasn't in a drug-induced haze. ‘Can you make sure this makes sense?’ So that definitely was an impact.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.