Looking to Tackle Prescription Overload
New York Times,
by
Paula Span
Original Article
Posted By: bamapreacher,
6/9/2021 11:49:00 AM
The last straw, for Leslie Hawkins, was her mother’s 93rd-birthday gathering in 2018. Her mother, Mary E. Harrison, had long contended with multiple health problems, including diabetes and the nerve pain it can cause; high blood pressure; anxiety; and some cognitive decline. She was prone to falling. Still, she had been a sociable, churchgoing nonagenarian until Hawkins, who cared for her in their shared home in Takoma Park, Maryland, began seeing disturbing changes. “She was out of it,” “She couldn’t hold a conversation or even finish a sentence (snip) Hawkins had brought a list of the 14 medications Harrison was taking
Reply 1 - Posted by:
zephyrgirl 6/9/2021 12:11:08 PM (No. 810735)
The same thing happened to my mother - overprescribed on Parkinson's Disease drugs. She was hallucinating and didn't make sense most of the time. We took her to a different specialist who immediately took her off of several drugs, and reduced the dosage of others. Almost overnight, she improved dramatically.
11 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Flyball Dogs 6/9/2021 12:50:29 PM (No. 810766)
Very important read.
Thanks for posting.
9 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
jimincalif 6/9/2021 12:50:50 PM (No. 810767)
My mother-in-law is 94. She was in pretty good health and not on any meds until about age 90. But she is going downhill mentally as well as physically, sundowning, hallucinating, getting confused, scared, and acting out against my wife, her husband (who has Alzheimer's) and her caregivers. She is on medication for this now, and frankly her life is much improved. She was really miserable all day previously, so meds have their place. It is important for anyone in this situation to have a family member advocate who can question how someone is being cared for and medicated. Doctors aren't always right and they should be willing to listen to the patient and her advocate and experiment with different treatment regimens to find the best possible approach. At this stage of life there are no solutions, only trade-offs (to quote Thomas Sowell I believe).
7 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
sanspeur 6/9/2021 12:58:41 PM (No. 810775)
this is exactly the thing killer cuomo was trying to stop /S ( reduces medicare costs miraculously too)
2 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
MickTurn 6/9/2021 1:03:07 PM (No. 810780)
This is pathetic, Doctors, if you can call them that, don't give a damn how many pills they push on a person. They have NO CLUE as to the interactions and side effects of that! They are basically pushing pills to make money, just like Big Pharma's Nazis! Mengele would be PROUD!
4 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Sandpiper 6/9/2021 1:14:25 PM (No. 810791)
This occurred with my father as well, though the culprit physician worked for the care facility where I had placed my dad. The facility liked their patients “compliant” (drugged) and by the time I moved my father elsewhere they had their physician proscribe a multitude of medications, one of which robbed my dad of his ability to walk. The new new dr I got was appalled and quickly worked to reduce the number of medications but sadly some irreversible damage was done.
2 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Jesuslover54 6/9/2021 1:29:02 PM (No. 810805)
When I was in practice I used to make sure that the elderly patients brought me all the drugs they were taking to the second visit in a paper bag, usually a pretty big one. Inside that bag was an array of drug interactions quietly hidden. We would go through the medications and before they left I would hand them usually two and hang on to the rest.
The patient always looked longingly at the ones I retained thinking I was stealing their drugs. Often had strong disagreements with me family caregiver over this
A week or two later they were always doing much better on just the one or two medications they really needed.
It was usually worse with the indigent patients because they had Medicaid or some other program that didn't require them to pay for their drugs so they were prescribed pretty freely.
9 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
kono 6/9/2021 1:33:04 PM (No. 810810)
Many people's journey to old age features a growing litany of health issues, each of which adds a new prescription or two along the way. Since 1998 I've had 2 inexplicable survivals and 3 explicable ones (1 being very unlikely and the other 2 merely surprising). I don't consider the 10 prescriptions and 4 supplements on my daily list to be unreasonable. While a bit tedious at times, it's better than pushing up the daisies, I reckon.
(Though the increasingly idiotic wokenness of the world makes me wonder sometimes whether one of those close calls actually got me dead and sent to hell.)
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
red1066 6/9/2021 2:05:09 PM (No. 810828)
I know at least a couple of relatives who took a particular med, and basically became zombies. One was so far out of it, she tripped over a curb, hit her head, and died three months later.
0 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Saryden 6/9/2021 2:29:41 PM (No. 810841)
My mother was put on fourteen medications by a mid-eastern physician in Illinois. She had several respiratory attacks, falls, hospitalizations, and felt generally unwell. We switched doctors, took away all medications except high blood-pressure and heart... she lived seven more years to 101 and ten months. It is my opinion that doctors receive a kick-back that encourages more prescriptions. Anyone know anything about that?
4 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Edgelady 6/9/2021 2:33:57 PM (No. 810847)
I started getting off medications for headaches, pain, antidepressants, about four years ago. Now I just have three I take.
0 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
DVC 6/9/2021 7:03:10 PM (No. 811088)
This happened to my MIL. I asked, from many states away, for a list of what she was taking. I recommended her son take her off of everything but her BP meds and in four days she was alert and making sense, could get out of bed and start being a LOT closer to normal. She had been bedridden and semi-conscious for a week before this. Too damned many drugs, including some really powerful sleeping pills had her in a hell of a mess. She was still very sick, but she lived a year and a half longer and was aware of what was going on and able to talk with family most of that time.
Docs agreed, and she only went back on two of the six or eight drugs she had been taking.
2 people like this.
I once told my PCP "As a Medicare recipient, I feel like a walking dollar sign" He didn't see the humor.
Being allergic to nearly everything has saved me a lot of trouble.
As a side note: Patients receiving free OTC items need to be careful. They are not the highest grade. One burned a hole in my esophagus.
0 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
cactus 6/10/2021 9:28:46 PM (No. 812127)
My mother lived in a different state and was taking a lot of prescribed drugs. She was often having problems - falling, weakness, sleeping. On one of my visits, I went to see her doctor to see if she could get off some of the pills. The doctor told me, “ She’s old. (84) Old people take pills” and refused to take off any of them. She would not change doctors. We sere able to move her to another state where we could watch over her and get a new doctor. We took her off most of the pills and her life was changed. We kept a close eye on all her medications after that. She died at 98.
0 people like this.
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I visit a number of elderly people in the course of my ministry and I am often appalled by the number of prescription bottles on their night tables or kitchen counters. Our local doctor, to whom I wouldn't go with a hangnail, prescribes and prescribes, as I'm sure too many doctors do. My late wife, whom he "treated," took at least 10 different medicines a day and she only made it to 66. I'm sure the Slimes has some ulterior motive in publishing this but it's true from my observation. Thank heavens my doctor is a U. of Alabama Medicine grad. I have diabetes and hypertension but I only take 2 little pills a day and make out just fine at 75.