It’s not funny!! Try traveling with a load of medicines. This is what happens when one is between the ages of fifty nine (well maybe a little older !!) and death. Doctors in the United States, in their wisdom and servitude to the drug companies, have taken action to keep us alive by prescribing legal drugs. This keeps us “medicined up” so that even if its time to “go,” they are extending life. It seems like four trips back, I traveled with one medication only that was prescribed so many years ago I cannot remember when it was. Then I changed my doctor and suddenly I found myself with all this new “stuff.”.
Is there a correlation between changing doctors and the increase in the number of prescription medications? Did my general health change so much overnight that I need to take at least twenty different medications amounting to I don’t know how many pills each day ? Multiply this by three months supply which is the possible duration of my trip and that’s a lot of medicine to be carrying around and dispensing on a daily basis. There are pills to be taken on waking, before eating, after eating, a pill before the pill, after the pill and on and on during each twenty four hours period. Occasionally I skip everything, except the one that was prescribed many years ago.
The doctors in South America are shocked at how many medicines are prescribed by our US Doctors. One of the Colombian doctors warned me that Naproxin which I know is readily prescribed, should not be taken if one is over a “certain age”. Instead there is a different more gentle medication for the oldies, that is manufactured in France to prevent bone density loss, and will not destroy the lining of my stomach or cause kidney failure. However, because it is manufactured n France, the US Drug Manufacturers won’t earn money on it.
Going through my medicines the doctor asked about a heart medication and if I had ever had a heart problem. No, I haven’t. Then why they wanted to know was this prescribed. Another to prevent bone density loss – but I do not have bone density loss. All these drugs were prescribed “to prevent’ something happening.. On and on down the list.
My poor daughters: the doctors are making sure it will it take forever for me to “pass on” to another life. If the doctors have their way I will remain “medicined up” and be around forever because there will be a drug for all conditions known to medicine.
These are prescriptions that can only be bought with a prescription issued by a doctor, Where I am living Colombia, every one of these can be purchased over the counter at a fraction of the price we are paying in the US. Something is not adding up – I think it is both the over prescribing of medications and the cost in the US.
And I was told Colombia had a drug problem!!