Micaela: Taking complementary medicines – Different views regarding complementary medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Micaela
Female
Age at interview: 38
Number of medicines: 21
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Micaela appreciates that her current ophthalmologist has taken a more holistic approach to her healthcare, which is very different from the approach she often encounters with other specialists.
The ophthalmologist who initially diagnosed me correctly, he definitely thought much more might be going on, so he wanted me to go and see someone who looked at my whole immune system. That ended up being of benefit, because I was then found to have Crohn's disease and ... um ... OK.
But a lot of specialists I find are very focused on their field and they are not ... their issue is ... ‘Well, if I can't directly see something going on in your eye, say, and I'm an ophthalmologist, I'm not even going to enter into any discussion about where else this might be ... what implications this might have for the rest of your body.’
So, I found that a lot of gastroenterologists have the attitude that it has nothing to do with diet, for example, which I find really odd, even to the extent of not admitting that, you know, if you had a flare-up, it wouldn't be a good idea to eat chilli, for example. They have the attitude of, ‘Eat what you like. It's nothing to do with it.’ While I accept it may be that nothing will actually trigger it, in the way that someone with coeliac, they will usually have an instant reaction to something that they shouldn't have eaten, obviously diet is involved. I mean, that's still dealing with the same area of the body, because it's going through the digestive system. But this doctor is much more ... much more prepared to accept that Crohn's isn't just the fact that I might go into your body and find that you actually have ulcers present at that time, but it will recognise that, because your immune system is compromised, that you are going to have different other problems as well, so it is likely that you will experience skin diseases ... dermatitis … more regularly than expected or react to things that you didn't necessarily react to before, whereas a lot of ... and I always want to know, if somebody puts me on a new medication, I want to know, well, what might it do to me. No, I'm not worried that I'm necessarily going to have the one in a million reaction, even though I seem to be that person sometimes.
I think some doctors are scared that you ... I don't know what they ... I don't know if it's because they think you're taking some authority away from them or power away from them, but they're not prepared to enter into any discussion that's beyond some sort of episodic situation. So, I was never told, until much later, I was never told by doctors, until much later, that it's quite common for people with Crohn's, for example, to experience hip pain and joint pain and muscle weakness. I mean, all these things, which may again ... were they ... is it from the steroids or is it from the Crohn's itself? You know, it can be really hard to distinguish, as I said. And um … some doctors just aren't prepared to go into symptoms or side effects or associated problems, which are often very helpful to know. And not because I panic, if something new goes wrong, but it's just good to be a bit forewarned.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.