Before breast cancer, I took a multivitamin (maybe) and that was it. At various times, I took some supplements when a vitamin or mineral showed up as lacking, but I generally eschewed medication and pills if I could. When I was trying to get pregnant, that changed and throughout pregnancies and breastfeeding, I started to take more supplementals and herbs as I worked to support my body in carrying and then feeding my children.
Fast forward to today and I, like Adiba take a LOT of pills every day. Here’s how she describes her medication regimen now …
I’m sure my body hates me too for a variety of reasons!
I’ve discovered something when it comes to prescribed medication and I wasn’t/am not happy about it. And my issue is this …. whenever we are prescribed any kind of medication, there are so many side effucks that we need to take more medication to deal with those. As I’ve seen with my father in law, who has been in a nursing home since 2005, some doctors just add on and add on and add on more medications without going back to the first medication to see if that’s still what the patient should be on.
It’s just one more thing that those of us who are professional patients have to deal with and requires each of us to be advocates to an extreme that is simply unconscionable. It’s adding insult to injury at times. Each physician or other medical provider does need to take two steps back and help us patients manage the cancer, the medication and all the side effucks that go along with it.
And now you know more about the challenges with medication for those of us forever patients.
No Half Measures 
I definitely identify with this one. What baffles me is when I’m in the hospital, I ask what each pill is for. When they tell me, I ask if it’s substituting for this one or that one. They always seem shocked that I know what my medications are, and I don’t understand that at all. Do people really not pay attention to what they are taking? By paying attention I got them trying to give me two of one by accident and forgetting another critical one.
As an aside, I could barely swallow pills without gagging when I was young. Now I can take up to 20 in one mouthful and wash them down. What a weird accomplishment. 🤷🏽♀️
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That is a weird accomplishment!! I’m still struggling a bit with washing them down and can only do 2 or 3, if they are small, at a time. I also get the astonishment when I know the brand names and the scientific names of medication and what they do and why. In Oncology there’s not as much astonishment, usually in the hospital though. I think there are more people who get immersed in what’s going on in the cancer world, but the people who are hospitalized are often not “with it” as much. I also think sometimes medical peeps express “astonishment” because it’s a way of saying something personal and positive to the patient. I know, I know, I’ve gotten a little too cynical and suspicious. 😉
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Who hasn’t!? It’s 2020! 😂
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So true!!
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