My father has been feeling incredibly ill lately. He has been suffering from muscle aches, weakness, vomiting, shaking, just to list a few. I visited him last week and noticed he had a huge load of medications he was instructed to take daily. I decided to punch in all his medications into a website drug interaction checker.
Lo and behold, his newest prescription was not to be taken with 4 of the other pills in his daily regimen. We called his doctor and his problem was solved.
If you'd like more information on drug interactions, the website is:
Always speak to your physician if you feel something is wrong.
By attosa from Los Angeles, CA
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Your father is very lucky to have you and that you caught this. I'm passing this site:drugs.com,which I've used for several years onto my friends. Thanks for sharing this very important info.
Keeper
Thank you for sharing this information. I put the website under my favorites so I can refer to it as needed.
Another good website to have on hand is the pill identification site. You can look up your medication and see a picture of it. This is good to have because druggist are human and they can make mistakes. I feel better when I have identified what my medication looks like and see that the pills I have are correct.
The website is: www.drugs.com/
What I do not understand is how the pharmacy filled a new prescription, not knowing what else he takes. Even the doctor should have known!
Logged in just to hit thumbs up on your extremely valuable tip. Thank-you!
Great tip to share, Attosa! I was reminded from the site below that my rescue inhaler shouldn't be used within a couple of hours of using my nebulizer medication. I had forgotten the warning my doctor had told me when they were prescribed. Both drugs are needed but it was the warning the site gave that made me aware to be more careful! I've been using the site for a couple of years and you can sign up with them for email updates for possible newly discovered interactions. I'll be using the site you suggest here as a backup too. :-)
As for someone mentioning to blame doctors and/or pharmacists, it's up to each individual to let every single doctor and all pharmacies know 'everything' that you take including your vitamins! There's a person in my apartment complex who almost died because she kept taking certain medications that one doctor prescribed and then another doctor prescribed something completely different for the same problem. She was taking both plus other medications prescribed by a third doctor :-0 None of the doctors knew of the other prescriptions and the woman was using different pharmacies to fill the prescriptions that also didn't know all of the medications.
Thumbs up, Attosa!
Thanks all - I think its super important to make sure your doctor is very clear on what what medicines and vitamins you are taking, too. As far as my father, the doctor did ask, my father did give the list, yet somehow this still happened. My whole family is pretty furious.
I've saved this to my Favorites, too - thanks! JPJ
Attosa, your thank you comment just jarred my memory about something! I was first emergency hospitalized and diagnosed with emphysema two and a half years ago. The first year or so the drugs kept being switched to find what worked best for me and because some of them were causing other problems like Thrush that got so bad it was on my vocal cords and I could barely talk. Some people liked that - LOL ;-) (Have to find humor in everything) :-)
Anyway, about a year ago the pulmonologist nurse was updating all my meds in my file. I couldn't remember the exact name of everything currently being taken and told her I could call when I got home. I guess she just put what she thought everything was in my file. Well, my doctor just about went balastic when he came in the room thinking I was taking the wrong things. We sorted it out and all was well and I was taking exactly what he wanted me to.
My point is that all down the chain from the person who puts the info into your file, to your doctor and to your pharmacist need to know what you are actually taking (they can't regulate you 24/7) and they need to know what might be in your stash that you might try to use in a pinch. Did that make sense?
BTW, how did you get your cool sounding nickname? :-)
Made perfect sense, Deeli! And I'm so happy you are OK after all that!
Re: My nickname "a2Sa" is just how my name, Attosa, is pronounced. My father picked my name and the spelling is very off. I use "a2Sa" to help people know my name is pronounced "a toooo sa" :) Thanks for asking!
If one gets all their meds at the same pharmacy this should not be a problem.
Something to add to your wonderful tips is to always use the same pharmacy, this should cut down any risk of interactions since the computer program will tell them what interacts. Many of the large pharmacies use these programs and it saves lives. Great ideas!
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