Things To Come
Someone commented recently that they read this here site to see what was ahead of them in older age.
Pills.
The fucking things have me demented.
I can’t mention that particular dementia to Doc though as he would just prescribe more pills.
The root of the problem is that Doc never seems to unprescribe anything. He puts me on a tablet for some relatively minor and temporary ailment and I then seem to be on it for life, unless I have a sit down session with him to go through the tablets, one by one and pointing out that I don’t need so many. He still prefers to err on the cautious side and keeps me on them anyway.
So over the years, the number of tablets and capsules has increased dramatically. Of course my little heart attack didn’t help much as my pill intake jumped exponentially.
If I’m bad, Herself is worse. She has a few health problems such as a stroke, an unsuccessful knee replacement and a few other problems so she is actually way ahead of me in the pill stakes.
Another problem is of course that after a while a pill loses some of its efficacy and the dose has to increased.
More pills.
Now the pharmacist has it in for me. I don’t know why. I am always cheerful and friendly when I’m in the chemist but my natural charm seems to be on the wane. She has started substituting things. Where 100 milligrams of something in the past was fine, she started substituting two 50 milligrams instead – twice as mant pills. Then came a substitution of 25 milligrams, thereby quadrupling the number. She has also started substituting a different brand for the same tablet which is even more confusing. It’s a wonder that I get any dosage right. Or maybe I don’t. That would explain a few things.
Yesterday I did out my tablets for the week. I’m currently on thirteen or so a day. Herself however is beating me hollow with twenty five [I have just done them]. To make matters worse, one of her items not only changed name but is being doubled at half the strength and the new little pills are a right fucking bugger to get out of their steel casing.
I really fucking hate pills.
My wife is the major pill consumer here at our digs. She has one of those pill caddy things for a weeks’ worth of doses.
The damned thing takes around 45 minutes to fill.
As for Me, hah! I have four pills I take every day, two in the AM and two in the PM. I spend a grand total of maybe, 15 seconds a day* with my meds.
*This is if I allow a few seconds to retrieve the one that drops into the basin before it goes down the drain.
Those caddies are the bane of my life, but they do make doling out the dose a lot easier [and safer]. I spend about 30 minutes n Thursday doing mine and about 45 minutes doing hers on Friday.
You’ll end up taking pills to counter the side-effects of other pills which cause symptoms for which more pills are ‘needed’.
It takes courage and a different attitude to reject any doctor’s advice, but how about just stop taking all of them and see what happens?
EG: I was prescribed Pantoprazole for hiatus hernia/acid re-flux years ago. It worked, but I ended up with gut pains which were, to the GP, unexplained. After many expensive but unnecessary tests the medics were still baffled, as the results did not match their expectations.
“Don’t stop taking the Pantoprazole, that’s not the problem, they said.”
But being a cantankerous old fellow, not one to follow authority, I stopped taking it.
Guess what? No more gut pains!
I don’t know if the side-effects information for Pantoprazole has been updated, but it should have been. It works just fine for a few months, but then is toxic.
That was just one drug reaction. How many similar problems would you have with multiple drugs, none of which have ever been tested for their interactions with other drugs! So your 13pd, or her 25pd, have millions of combined and potentially damaging effects when ingested together…
That has always been my theory born out of experience. A couple of my pills are purely to counteract the effects of other pills. It’s no wonder Big Pharma is making such vast profits.
A couple of times I have forgotten to take my morning ones and each time the day turned somewhat surreal. Another time I accidentally took my evening ones in the morning which was a disaster. That resulted in a very weird day that I would sooner forget.
My mother-in-law was terminally ill and was referred to our local hospice for care. The first thing the hospice doctor did was go through the list of tablets my MIL was taking and weed out the unnecessary ones. Bit of a high bar though.
In the UK a good pharmacist (I have one) will invite you to an annual review of your medications and suggest changes if necessary.
Herself had to go into hospital a while back. They checked the list of medications and decided to stop one of the doses. The withdrawals had a catastrophic effect including hallucinations. That medication had a warning notice on its pamphlet – Do NOT stop taking this medication unless under strict medical supervision. Needless to say the hospital never did any supervision. I presume they thought this was normal behaviour and that she was just a bit tapped.
I heard of a lady who was on multiple pill prescriptions and every time she went to the doc’s her levels were upupup or downdowndown, despite their best analytical prescribing. Eventually they asked for her comments and she said she’d found it all too complicated so emptied all the bottles into one bag and took out a random 10 every day.
Looks like if she could survive that she could do without the lot. My dear GP friend told me in many cases old ladies would be better off ditching the drugs and having a sherry every night.
I knew a bloke at work who was on a couple of prescriptions. One was for sleeping and one was to give him a boost in the morning. Then onetime the pharmacist accidentally switched the labels on the bottles……..!