Lyn: Starting and changing medicines – Reducing the number of medicines taken
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Lyn
Female
Age at interview: 67
Number of medicines: 1
Cultural background: British-Australian
Lyn reduces her medicines where she can because she is concerned about becoming dependent on them. She has found that there are some medicines she cannot do without.
I had spinal surgery, I was postoperative, I'd had a massive infection in my spine and I was in a lot of pain. So, that was the medication that my neurologist … neurosurgeon said was going to work best for me and, in conjunction with her help, after a couple of months of being home and moving around a bit more and being less in pain, I was able to reduce the dosage of that systematically by just, you know, dropping down the dosage, say every week or so, because I was told that they are addictive and I didn't want to be on them long term … I mean there are some times when I look at it all and think, ‘If I just stop taking everything, would I be better?’ But I know that I can't. I've tried a couple of times to drop some of the medications and I've had to go back to using them again.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.