A few years ago, an elderly family member developed a strange problem. When she went to sleep, she would sleep for about two hours and wake up dripping with sweat, her heart pounding like a jackhammer. Once she got dried off and calmed down, she would go back to sleep and the same thing would happen again. It got so bad for her that she became afraid to go to sleep because the events were so terrible. Her Doctor’s brilliant suggestion was to put a lighter blanket on her bed.
This went on for two years and we thought we were going to lose her because she is frail and few people can go for years without proper sleep without going mad. Sleep deprivation has such ghastly effects that it is considered one of the fastest ways of breaking a prisoner for interrogation. That is why it is specifically forbidden to use sleep deprivation on prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Most prisoners of war are healthy young people so, you see, it is even worse to do this to a frail older person.
My relative went to several medical practitioners and received no help. After a very long wait, she was able to see an Endocrinologist to have her hormones looked at. There was nothing wrong with her hormones. The Endocrinologist, to her everlasting credit, continued looking for the cause of this, really terrible problem. She looked at all the side effects of my relative’s medications. One was an anti-anxiety drug that her idiot quack had prescribed right before the terrible night terrors began. It was causing the terrible night terrors. Her quack had never bothered to look at what the side effects of her drugs were. My relative got off the drug that was causing her so much stress and anxiety and got better right away.
I mentioned this to an American friend who responded with the story of his mother who suffered chronic diarrhea for ten years. Her Doctor was puzzled by her symptoms. My friend decided to look up the side effects of all the drugs his poor old Mom was on. One of them commonly caused chronic diarrhea. He brought this to the attention of his Mom’s Doctor and the shameless man just wrote out a new prescription without one word of apology for the decade of severe pain, anguish and frustration that his laziness and incompetence has visited upon this blameless woman.
It is important to note that the term, “side effects,” sound kind of benign as if they were something you might experience or not. A Doctor explained to me that this is not the case. All side effects are the effects of the drugs and you will experience them all. The pharmaceutical companies simply call them side effects because they want to concentrate on the effects they think will be likely to get your Doctor to prescribe their filthy junk for you.
A Doctor friend told me this story. He had a patient who suffered from high-blood pressure. He had this guy on three different medications to lower his blood pressure. The man asked him if his pills were good? My friend replied that, “Of course they are good.” But, he wasn’t really sure so he began to record his patient’s blood pressure on a graph. He found he was able to take his patient off two of the medications without any effect on his blood pressure. So, some medications are of no use at all.
But back to my elderly relative. Recently, she began to have problems sleeping again. She would go to sleep but wake up after about two hours with a mouth as dry as the Sahara. I asked if she was on any new medications because I, correctly, assumed her Doctor was trying to kill her again. She was.
She had prescribed my frail, old relative an anti-psychotic medication used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Some Doctors are using this at a low dose to treat insomnia even though it is not approved for the treatment of insomnia.
The drug is called Jamp Quietiapine and its side effects include, but are not limited to, dry mouth, headache, constipation, suicidal thoughts, falls (which is just what you want in a lady in her late eighty’s) convulsions, uncontrollable body movements, dizziness, increased risk of fracture of the hip wrist and spine and the list goes on. I told her about these side effects and she flushed the pills down the toilet.
I spoke with her this evening and she is again suffering from dry mouth and a different Doctor had prescribed a drug for the treatment of her acid reflux. The side effects of this new drug include black, tarry stools, blistering, peeling or loosening of the skin, chest pain, red skin lesions with a purple centre, ulcers in the mouth and a host of other unpleasant experiences.
Acid reflux can also be treated by losing weight, not drinking coffee or alcohol, not wearing tight clothes, not eating too fast or too much, elevating the head of your bed and a few other simple and harmless practices. Which would you choose?
So, if you, or any of your friends or relatives, are ill, I implore you to look up the side effects of any medications yu are taking as they do sometimes cause these slight problems.
