And you mentioned there that you take a number of different medications.

Yes.

Are they just for the strokes and diabetes or do you take things for other conditions as well?

Yes, well, I’ve had cancer twice.

Right.

On the stomach.

Right.

So I have to have tablets for that. I have a B12 injection every three months. I have to have that for that reason.

Okay.

And I’ve had arthritis as well. I’ve had both my knees done. So a bit of a record to give you [laughs].

Right. Okay. And how do you do you find it taking all of these tablets?

Yeah, I’ve got used to it after all this time. I’ve got a little thing to put a week’s supply in and it just seems to make the weeks go quicker, you know. I fill them up and think, I’ve only just done that [laughs]. And they’re all gone again, yeah.

Oh yeah and always very good, you know, they, you know, always, they’re always helpful and, as I say, you’ve always got a specialist nurse or another nurse is available, when you can’t see the consultant to get, you know, you could ring up for advice.

I mean like my GP, I said recently I saw him, first time for nearly a year because he’s given me, you know, he’s told me what to do. And when I need a repeat prescriptions, he gives me them because he knows, you know, I have to take them. I don’t take any tablet unless I’m told to by him. You know, I don’t go to the doctors and say, I’ve got this. I’ve got that. Because I won’t. I just, you know, stay at the basics, the specifics, you know, just get, What can I do about this, doctor? And he’ll say, well, either I go on medication or what other else to do, and when he signs the repeat prescriptions, he knows I need them.

In terms of medication, or just living with the conditions, do you find, do you notice any interactions at all between the two?

Not so much interaction between the two but maybe slight signs of side effects, but they are clearly indicated in your packaging as well as by your GP, it’s certain there will be some. They are of concern and the concern is, is that side effect making the condition worse or is the medication treating but the side effect is something you have to learn [to live] with. That tends to be the concern, yeah. For example, you know, is a medication you are taking to treat an illness, it has a side effect. Is that side effect making the illness worse? I don’t know. That is for you people in the industry to look into and but that would be the only slight concern in my mind, to worsen.

I think one of the hardest things is just constantly having to take medication to the fact that your life kind of you can’t be spontaneous, because you’ve got to suddenly think, Ooh, we, you know, do I need to take this with me? Do I need to have this with me? Or you can’t just kind of go off. Daft things, we, when we went on holiday last year, I think we probably spent more time trying to sort out travel insurance, letters confirming that I did need needles, the insulin, the drugs and all of that and it’s just, it weighs you down. You kind of think, I just, it would just be so nice just to walk out of the door and just go and do whatever.

And were you, your medication changed as a result or?

My medication was changed and then, because your medication changes, that affects your blood sugars, so then you have to start adjusting your insulin to affect the change they’ve give you in your tablets, because every tablet that they give you has a side effects, obviously, and that alters everything else. I’m on over thirty tablets a day now.

Okay.

For all my different conditions.

The side effects of all these cross drugs, yeah aren’t sort of connected, at least they weren’t then and again, you know, I suppose I feel disappointed in that or wished I’d looked it up and known more, you know, that kind of thing. But yeah, that’s the side effects. I have been on anti-epileptic drugs for so long, you know, I should imagine it would be really weird not to be on them and the theory is, I’d have more seizures. But I sometimes I wonder, you know, I do think, Gosh, just to come off them all and remain the same, see what happens. But that’s not necessarily a good idea. I was always kind of warned that my seizures could turn into, you know, general seizures so that’s always been a sort of a deterrent for me to come off

Right.

medication but I don’t know, you know. When it’s at its worst, I sort of think or, you know, I’m prescribed a new drug that doesn’t work, then I’ve had it. I want to get rid of all of them then but I don’t and I haven’t got that far yet.

Yeah. The pain meds were for what, at that point, was the osteoarthritis and the fibromyalgia. So, I was taking amitriptyline at night as a muscle relaxant, to help with the pain so that I could sleep. I was taking citalopram in the morning for a similar, sort of, reason. I was taking pregabalin, which the pain clinic had suggested might help with the fibromyalgia. Oh god, what else was I taking, there was something else, I can’t remember what it was. But none of them were helping with the pain, and my perception of it was, that every time they added another Smartie to the box, they didn’t take a Smartie away. And they don’t work from a baseline, so they don’t say, okay, at the moment you’re not taking anything, so we’ll try x and see if x works, and if it does great, if not, we’ll withdraw it and we’ll try y. They just keep adding and adding and adding. They’re all toxins, they may or may not be good drugs, I don’t know, but the combination of all of the drugs seems to me to be not a good thing to be taking into your body without thinking about it.

And the pharmacist was the one who said, well, if it’s not helping with the pain why are you taking it? So then, I went to the GP and said what the pharmacist had said, and we agreed that I would do a staged withdrawal from all the drugs.

And, how do you feel compared to when you were on all the drugs?

Ah well, it’s interesting, because, some of the pain that I wasn’t feeling as much before, so the neck pain is worse, so I think the drugs were actually helping with the neck pain. And, the lumbar back pain is worse, and so I think the drugs were helping with that. But, the muscle pain in the arms and the legs, I haven’t got any at the moment. But, you see, that is complex as well, because it always does fluctuate, so sometimes it’s bad and sometimes it’s not bad. So, with something like fibromyalgia, you don’t know whether it’s just decided that it’s going to have a few days holiday, or what’s going on. So, I don’t know whether it’s the drugs that have made a difference to that.

I had my initial new patient appointment in January, in which I went through all the drugs I was on. The GP did blood pressure and weight check and promptly reduced the dose of blood pressure medication that I’m on.

Right.

So that was that was quite good because I had only come off another blood pressure drug, so the diuretic side of it, I was taken off that in in October when I no longer needed it and I was getting some funny electrolyte levels, which.

Right.

The, if you don’t need the diuretic it can do that so I was taken off that, to have the ACE inhibitor dose reduced was really quite positive. I haven’t been followed up for that since, however, I don’t I have no reason to think my blood pressure has gone up since then because, of course, I’m still I’m still losing the weight and keeping up the exercise.

Whereas now, the consultant, you know, I’ve been seeing him for quite a few years.

So I feel better with him and I, it worries me sometimes that he’ll go and then who will the next one be? But.

Right. Okay, so that continuity

[mm]

Is important?

Yes, I, yeah, I yeah, I find that is that is important now, you know. At one time, when the nurse left, he did think he would be getting a replacement nurse and, of course, that’s just drifted on and he hasn’t got another one. So but as I feel at the moment, seeing him is fine and I did like it when the nurse was there because that was quite a quite a while but, you know, it’s fine as it is now. So I think better, I feel better with him because, when they changed me to him, because I was taking so much medication, I took it all in in a big carrier bag, when I, when they first gave me my first appointment.

Right.

And said to him I was concerned about taking so much medication so, of course, from then, it’s when he started trying to change things and make my amount of tablets less and different and that’s when, you know, things started to get a bit better. So it’s taken a while.