Originally Posted by storm-wolf

Hi Kirin! *Runs to glomp Kirin* Roll for agility... please not a 1. Oh to all the dice gods, not a 1.

Hey hey. How are you?

I've been greatly neglecting the forums lately. :(
Life is getting so busy for me! I worked long hours Wednesday and got sick from the kids. C:

Then therapy on top of that takes up so much time.

Does it bother anyone else how expensive therapy is?

Ugh, and medication, yeah, I hear you. I stopped seeing a psychiatrist and taking meds for ADD years ago because it was too expensive to be worth it. I probably should look into it again now that I'm over here, medical stuff is less expensive because yay socialized medicine, but I dunno. Probably should get more therapy for my other issues too, but haven't bothered since the move with that, either. I can't imagine a language barrier is good for talking about my issues anyway >> lol.

Ah, the cost of therapy, a.k.a. the reason I went untreated for PTSD for most of my life.

Really, can the US just get with the picture already? We are the ONLY country in the developed world - and ALL of the Western hemisphere - that considers healthcare a luxury rather than a right. It's completely asinine.

And then when tragedy strikes and a mentally ill person snaps and does something horrific, they wonder why they weren't getting the treatment they desperately needed.... and instead of funding cheaper psychiatric help, they push for gun control :| Not commenting on the gun control debate, just the skewed priorities.

But yeah, as an American living in Sweden, I find myself in an interesting position where I've seen how the care in the US is, and I've heard the propaganda spread in the US about how terrible socialized medicine is and how it is failing in other countries... ...and then I've seen medical care over here and continue to be surprised how efficient and cheap and NOT EVIL it actually is :P So now anytime I see the debate cross facebook, I'm quick to correct my friends and family who are still in the States.

I've gotten in to see the general practitioner doctor the very next day. I've been to the emergency room and only had to wait about an hour, if that (I wasn't an urgent case - and I've had to wait awhile in american emergency rooms, too. One time in the US, they thought I might've had a stroke and I still had to wait awhile and even after that they had to put me in a bed in the hallway because there was no room available... actually, I've been put in the hallway at least twice in the US >> )... honestly.... my medical experiences over here have been quite better, now that I think about it... and a heck of a lot cheaper.. >> It's clean and not crowded and things get done. Imagine that!

Wow, it's almost like the more people who get preventative care, the fewer people who need emergency care. Huh. Who'd'a thunk it? [/sarcasm]

It's funny because for all the talk of how horrible socialized medicine is in other countries...every time a friend of mine from Not Here hears about the ambulance bill when my father broke his hip, or the time my insurance tried to claim the three days I was hospitalized for mysteriously losing half the strength in my entire left side was medically unnecessary, usually the reaction I get is "HOLY SHIT ARE YOU OKAY OVER THERE??? PLEASE COME SEE MY DOCTOR." Not a single complaint about wait times or disgruntled doctors or ANYTHING like that.

The propaganda machine is gonna have to learn that hey, surprise, we can talk to people from other parts of the world now.

Holy crap, that is pretty bad, yeah.

The only thing that would be the same here is that they're going to start charging for the ambulance now because some people were abusing it and basically using it like a free taxi into town, hahaha. Yeah, so that happened, lol. I doubt it'll be as much as in the US, but I kinda chuckled when I heard that.

I have 2 complaints about medication:
1: TOO MANY SIDE EFFECTS!! Seriously... I'm currently learning pharmacy and I would not take ANY of the medications I am learning about. From fecal bleeding to insomnia, to heart failure, chest pain, so many scary symptoms we should be focusing on fixing.

2: Doctors push medications we don't need too much. I've had doctors try to give me Omeprazole (acid reflux medication) because I had a cough.

As for the price, I would recommend making sure your doctor always prescribes the generic when possible. Generics are way cheaper.

The thing is, depending on what the medicine is for, side effects can be a lot scarier in theory than in reality. There are no toxic chemicals, only toxic doses. (In fact, there are no non-toxic chemicals either - even oxygen can become fatal at too high of a concentration.) Usually at a therapeutic dose, a person is going to have few to none of the possible side effects - and the scarier ones, well, those are usually cause to switch medicines.

Though that's not to say they're noit pretty awful in reality too, sometimes. I was on Topamax for several years, though, and I was not one of the lucky ones - I got every non-serious side effect in the book, except weight loss. Hands and feet forever asleep? Check. Feel like a zombie? Check. Stomach pain? Check.

I have also discovered I'm allergic to cottonseed oil...and I'm currently on medicine by injection, suspended in cottonseed oil...

It's that "being the lucky ones" thing that concerns me. I don't want to play the health risk lotto

If you're allergic can you get your medication changed?

Personally, I've found great success with medication and therapy combined.

But in order for my therapy to work, I need to be on medication. Unfortunately, because I've had so many flair ups, it looks as though I'll be on my medication indefinitely. The thing is, therapeutic dose changes for me throughout the course of my illness. Say, I'm recovering from relapse, my dose will be higher, most of the time I actually get to the point where I max out on my medication because I'm taking so much. Then, on better days, I can get my dose lowered.


When I had to ride the ambulance to get to the hospital once, it cost well over $900 for the ride. And I felt like that was a horrible rip off. I understand, ambulances are expensive because of the amount of high tech equipment in them, but I was in the ambulance headed to the mental health unit, so I didn't need any of the equipment yet they still charged me for the ride as though I used that stuff! It was ridiculous!

I take Primrose Oil for my A.D.D.

Ava - I guess it makes a bit of a difference when I'm reading 50+ medications a day and not taking any of them
Unfortunately to be a pharmacy tech, I have to know all those horrible side effects.

It's always good when a medication helps though ^^

I take natural when at all possible.

Sadly changing my medicine is not really an option for me. It CAN be compounded with sesame oil - but there's often a shortage of it premade and there isn't a compounding pharmacy near me that can make it. I could get transdermal patches or gel instead, but my insurance won't cover it - considering the attitude in the US I'm lucky ANYTHING is covered really...so, I just get to deal with itching from hell.

My father may have over a million dollars in ambulance bills outstanding - I'm not sure of the exact number, but my mother had to be taken to the hospital by air ambulance twice and each of those trips was in the hundreds of thousands, and then there was the ground ambulance from when he broke his hip (tens of thousands, not covered by insurance), and a few other incidents...the good news is, medical debt cannot legally be used to damage your credit, nor can they repossess any of your belongings to pay for it unless you signed a lien authorization (WHICH hospitals will often try to make you do while you are too drugged/sick to be able to comprehend what you're signing), but that doesn't make it not ridiculous.

On the whole medication topic, I also absolutely hate taking medication, even over the counter, unless I really really need it. I just always end up with the bizarre side-effects that only .01% are supposed to get, without fail I swear. My husband, on the other hand, thinks nothing of it and sometimes offers me his prescriptions because it'll make me feel better and then doesn't understand why I adamantly refuse, because it's just sleeping pills or it's just anti-nausea pills or anti-acid reflux pills, they're harmless, you'll be fine. *facepalm*

To put things in perspective... benedryl gives me weird side-effects, and I don't mean sleepiness because it doesn't make me sleepy, I mean I basically get high as a kite on benedryl. I once had to take some at my grandmother's house and my cousin looked at me and goes, man, what are you on? I need six beers before I start acting like that. Benedryl, it was just benedryl, and I act like a four-year-old.

...yeah, so, talking about all the bizarre things that have happened to me from prescriptions... I'm not even gonna bother listing at this point :P I do take one prescription daily, and that's because if I don't I have constant migraines, like 24/7 nonstop sitting in the dark, stuttering, lack of coordination... yeah, I'm on that prescription just to function, and the journey through prescription land to find the one that actually worked without giving me the weird rare side effects was quite the trip. So, I'm glad for modern medicine and the fact that it allows me to function, but I avoid taking anything unless absolutely necessary and I don't understand the willy-nilly prescribing of things for the tiniest problems. Bleh.

Ah, Benadryl. That's part of my new allergy medicine ritual; I take that at night and Claritin in the morning.

Fun fact: at high doses, Benadryl is a pretty powerful hallucinogen. And a terrifying one. Take too much of it, and usually you will be seeing monsters from your worst nightmares.

Related fun fact: It can still have hallucinogenic effects at low doses, if you fight through the drowsiness. The other night, I forced myself to stay awake to talk to a friend...until the computer, floor, and walls started melting. In that instant I realized it was probably time to go to sleep.

Haha, yeah, it does that, too. My mom gave me a little too much once when I was very little and I hallucinated that bugs were crawling all over me. She had to put me in the bath to pretend to wash them off of me to get me to calm down.

I've never hallucinated on Benadryl, even when I've taken too much.

Meeeeeee, neither.

Well, it obviously affects different people in different ways, as a lot of drugs and their side effects do. I don't recommend intentionally taking too much just to find out, though :P

Kirin - Natural has been becoming much more popular as of late.

Sarah - Interesting that he shares his prescriptions. That is heavily frowned on in the pharmacy industry. Especially since dosages are often predetermined for the person taking it, so it might be too strong for another individual.

The biggest complaint I hear though is that people don't finish their medication. Like Antibiotics, which unfinished can create a super bug.

Yeah, even if you ARE into altered states of consciousness, too much Benadryl is usually the opposite of fun.

The funny thing is, Benadryl is one of the only things that actually makes me drowsy. That and Dramamine, which is chemically pretty similar. I scare doctors with how much I resist most...everything. We discovered this when I was a toddler and had to be put under for dental surgery, and so that's been my life ever since.

Though it makes for a fun party trick; alcohol is something I'm almost completely immune to, so I can drink most people under the table and not get drunk myself. I don't do it often though because I'm the only one in my usual group who can drive and I'd hate to find out the hard way that although nothing else has changed, my reaction times are compromised.

Poet - Yeah, see, this is the sort of thing I keep telling him! He doesn't try to share them with anyone else, though. I think he just doesn't like seeing me sick so it's something he feels he can do to help, but I turn him down every time. Goodness, not only do you have to worry about drug interactions and the fact that I seem to get all the weird side-effects, but you're right on dosages and I hadn't thought of that. He weighs almost twice what I do, so dosage differences could actually be a thing, yeah. But he swears they're harmless :P and I call BS. If they didn't need to be controlled, they'd be OTC, and even OTC drugs can be bad in the wrong dosage, so prescriptions even moreso, I figure. But it is sweet that he means well by it, if nothing else.

Sarah - Is he trying to share CII to CV medications? I mean, they're controlled for a reason. CIIs are typically called Narcotics for a reason after all.
Also, there is the risk of allergies too.