The old saying buyer be where means look after yourself. If you trust yourself to a doctor than you need to check if he is doing the job. If you called a plumber, electrician, mechanic you would not plan to go back two weeks later for him to do the job again. Since the drug companies took over medicine the word cure was remove and replaced with manage, control, and treat. Doctors are highly skilled in diagnosing diseases and treating with what they think is best, their education is based in drug so that is their first choice. Knowledge is power learning something about health and asking your doctor what will this drug do and what other things should I do. Like if you are getting an antibiotic think about replenishing the bacteria in your gut after your finished because you need them for healthy body.
All you needed to do is read some of the replies. That's all. Like youself, not everyone on this forum will agree with me, but that's up to them. Ok, you are now out of this thread, as far as I'm concerned. Have a nice one.
I don't have to read any replies Cody...that's my choice. Yes, I'm out of this thread and probably all of yours....I tried, I was warned, I'm done.
I think that we should never ignore side effects, and agree with you completely, @Patsy Faye . The doctor should be only prescribing things which are safe for us to take with our medical history, and I think that @Cody Fousnaugh is making a good decision to change doctors. We are happy with the PCP we have now, and he is excellent for making sure that what he prescribes is fine with our medical history; but we always ask him if we have questions about something, and he also checks with us to see if we are experiencing any unexpected side effects. Ultimately, we are responsible for taking care of our own body, and I think that it is a good idea to either look up possible side effects before we take any medication, just in case the doctor overlooked something. When you see that the doctor is not doing his part properly, then it is time to look for a different doctor, as Cody said.
@Yvonne Smith - yes we have to be aware and sensible I have had many issues with doctors over the years, there are good ones of course and that's a blessing
It seems to me that the system is set up to allow for checks and balances. I agree, one hundred percent, that a doctor should be familiar with the patient that he or she is prescribing a medication to, and this should include known allergies and possible adverse reactions of one medication to another. They should know these things and take them into consideration. However, the reality is that some doctors see a lot of patients and spend only a small amount of time with any one patient. There is probably some personal bias involved here, but it seems that this has worsened since ObamaCare came on board. I live in a town with only a couple of thousand people, yet the local doctor who diagnosed me with cancer was surprised to learn later that I had had cancer. There is also the fact that pharmacologists are trained for far more than mixing medications and putting them into bottles. You might think of a pharmacologist as a doctor who specializes in medications, and their knowledge is generally underused. In part, this is because we tend to treat the pharmacologist as we do the grocery store clerk, and many people are unaware that they really can help with this sort of thing. There is also the fact that the person giving you the medication at the pharmacy is probably not the pharmacist, and there are often other people waiting in line so we hesitate to ask questions. Prescribing physicians should recognize that most people do not make use of the pharmacist in this way, however. I know there have been cases where a pharmacist has caught possible drug interactions, where the prescribing physician had not picked up on it, because they had a record of all the medications that a patient was taking.
We are responsible for our health which is why we go to the doctor for what ails us. We are aware that there are medications that have side effects and we can and should expect the doctor to avoid his patients from bad interactions from those that are prescribed rather than rely on ourselves to make that decision of what is best to take and not to take. It's a matter of trusting your doctor to do that.
This was a brand new doctor that I seen. Just sort of stuns me now that, after filling out all this paperwork concerning my health history, that he would prescribe me this stuff. I was more interested in getting rid of the whistling noise, more than anything else. I remember getting a blood pressure med from my VA doctor. I noticed it made my legs ache, stopped taking it and contacted the doctor. She immediately changed the med with no more problems.
Drugs are studied to know the actions and side effects but are not studies the interactions between drugs. These interactions can be deadly. Doctors can pick up the obvious and say if we are giving you a drug to block calcium he does not give you a drug to increase calcium absorption. There is little to none, studies of some drug that work and they do not know why the just do. When you start mixing drugs there is no study to tell them the reaction. So if you are taking a mixture of drugs sorry they do not have a clue what might happen you are the test subject.
I don't know. Even at the paramedic level, we learned about drug interactions and I was proud to have picked up on that once when I had a patient whose signs and symptoms led to it. I know that drug interactions are studied because I have a book about drug interactions, and I am pretty sure that doctors learn this stuff, as well.
Yes, the PDR would have some of that as well, but what I'm telling you is that there are studies -- and books -- on drug interactions, which has to do with things that can happen when drugs are mixed. One of the classes I taught was Pharmacology for paramedics and nursing students, and one of the books I used was a Guide to Drug Interactions, which I have in front of me. It not only covers the problems that can be caused when a patient is taking two drugs that don't play well together, but it also discusses interactions between drugs and certain foods and drinks. For example, the potency of several drugs is enhanced greatly when taken with grapefruit juice. A person could potentially overdose by taking a therapeutic dose of a medication and washing it down with grapefruit juice. The concentration of medications, such as Procardia and other calcium channel blockers, can be dramatically increased when taken with grapefruit juice. You are right, though, when you suggest that doctors do not always warn their patients about such things. The doctor's orders are generally to take medications with water, but patients sometimes assume that it's only important that they take it with a liquid, and so may wash it down with juice or pop or something else. Verapamil is another medication that shouldn't be taken with grapefruit juice because the juice can effect the rate at which it is metabolized. These interactions are not so likely to be fatal but that doesn't mean that no damage is being done. There are several foods and drinks that can cause harmful interactions with different medications. Most of the book, however, deals with interactions with two or more drugs that a patient may be taking.
Checked my blood glucose this AM and it was 208. Before taking the Prednisone, it was around 150. With my A1C down to 6.8, from 7.4 six months ago, my VA doctor was fine with the 150 glucose number. The Prednisone is staying in my body longer than normal and it's keeping my BG high, even though I take 2,000 mg now of Metformin daily. My eye doctor told me last week that it would take a few more days for my distance blurred vision to go back to normal..........don't see that happening with the BG staying that high right now.
I do hope you feel better. I certainly hope this will not happen again. The forms are there for a reason, but it doesn't mean that the interaction between the doctor and patient ends there. Checklists are sometimes incomplete, and it's always a must to elaborate on aything abnormal seen in the checklist