Don't Stop Taking Your Daily Medications!
Posted: Friday, August 19, 2011
by Bob Alexander
http://www.bluemarlinbob.com
It’s not a good idea to suddenly quit taking your prescription drugs, without consulting your doctor. In fact, I may have caused a couple of the health problems I have today by not paying attention to the technical advice in the material I received when I got my prescription filled.
I have had a heart attack, atrial ablation, stroke, diabetes, hiatal hernia and swollen feet. My health is pretty good as long as I take a fist full of medicine every morning. Here is what happed when I forgot to take certain pills for a few days.
No one can be sure, but it is possible that the lack of Coumadin flowing in my arteries contributed to throwing a blood clot to my brain. In lay terms, I had a stroke. A stroke is a sudden stoppage of blood flow to the brain. A sudden rupture or blockage of a blood vessel in the brain is a stroke, which could result in loss of speech, loss of movement in the arms or legs and even loss of consciousness. With me, all of those things occurred.
During a stroke, brain cells die, including speech, movement and memory. How much these functions are affected depends on how much of the brain was damaged. Lucky for me the stroke could have been worse.
If you are taking blood thinners, don’t quit until the doctor advises you to stop. I found out the hard way that I should have listen more closely to the nurse practitioner’s instructions on how to take my medicine.
Earlier this year the second stupid thing I did was delay for a few days in taking my heart pills. I had finished my bottle of the medicine that keeps my heart beating regularly. My prescription had run out on the Bi-Stolic that keeps my heart beating at a steady rate. I had an arterial ablation last year and thought I was done with having an irregular, arrhythmia; heartbeat. While everyone, to some extent has Afib, my heart was beating like a crazed pinball machine.
On the fourth day without medication, my heart started skipping beats and sounded like music from a free-style ballroom dance contest. The rhythm was jumping all over the place. The doctor told me to immediately go to the pharmacy. I did and there was a new prescription waiting for me. After taking the pill, in a few hours my heart began to beat again at its own pace.
My blood pressure has been out of whack for many years. Recently, through a combination of blood pressure medications, the doctor has managed to get it to an acceptable level. Should I miss a few days of taking any one of the blood pressure pills, my prayer is that one of the ones remaining on my schedule will kick in and save me from having something bad happening to me.
It’s dangerous to stop taking your medications unless the doctor has so ordered, unless you want to end up like me.
Bob Alexander is a son of the south. He has gained expert status in eating barbeque, telling fishing stories and leisure living.
Visit his site at: www.homeandgardenbob.com
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)In my opinion, in heart disease, it is true that we need to take the daily medicines, but what I see in the medical field, they are treating the disease, not the root cause of the disease. Though how much you drank your medicine but you are still eating the wrong kind of food, the disease causing agent is still within your body. Of course, if you are taking medicine for quite a long time, you will definitely feel good even after not taking it for a few months, but since the root cause has not been determine, you will still get the same kind of disease months after not consuming your medicine. For one to decide to remove their medicine, one needs a total change of lifestyle. have you before you decided to stop taking your daily medicine?
were you advice on the proper way of eating our food? were you given an advice also that sleep is the biggest factor in healing your organ or your blood? exercise also is a factor since heart is the biggest muscle. have you drank enough water to hydrate your system?
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