I read a post by a member here on Hive about how she tried so hard to be a fake doctor to treat her sick roommate. She went to the pharmacy and bought her roommate some medicine to treat her illness, which subsided. She was happy not until two days later when she saw her patient's condition. It got so bad that she had to let go, and then the victim went to the hospital for a checkup.
She was treating malaria and typhoid, when she realized she was having the symptoms. But when the test results came out she was diagnosed with bacterial infection. Imagine!. Treating bacterial infection with malaria medication. It's just like feeding those microbes and giving them a happy home inside her.
The consequences of self-medication. It's just like gambling. You have to guess the odds and pick a choice of medication to counter the illness. It might be a game of luck where you win or lose. If you win, be prepared to lose at the end. And if you lose, be prepared for the sacrifice.
Self-medication is something so common nowadays. Apart from all of these herbal concoctions that are locally prepared with leaves, tree trunks, roots, or animals. They are natural, yet you still can't treat yourself with them if not prescribed by a professional.
Where people get it wrong is that once they get to know what is combined to make the herb the next time they feel they are experiencing the same illness or they know someone who has that kind of illness. The next thing they do is to prepare it and start using it without taking into consideration the dosage, the amount, the level of illness, and other things that happened before the herb was used.
Same thing with these conventional medicines we use. When a doctor prescribes a particular medicine to use they get a good response to the person’s health. Then the next thing is to memorize the name of those medicines and then pass it on to someone else who is experiencing the same.
A few months ago we had to face a near-death experience of my maternal grandmother and this was as a result of self-medication. Though she is older. But her death might have happened out of carelessness. She is in her early 90’s but she is the strong type of woman. Old age had taken away all of those energies.
Her son was in care of her well-being. Maybe because she couldn’t complain much and she kept trying to be strong. She finally got ill. Her son got her some medicine and was self-medicating her in the room. We had to go check on her. When we got there and saw her condition, it had gotten out of hand. She can't even recognize us anymore. It's already a near-death experience.
Dad checked the medicine he was using for her and saw that he was treating her with painkillers and she was having high levels of typhoid and malaria. We Had to rush her home and call a doctor to attend to her. She’s been having a hard time closing her eyes for days. But when the doctor came around he said the malaria and fever had gotten so strong.
He gave her an injection and she slept off immediately for hours. He said she would regain her balance again when she woke up, which he did. She regained consciousness and took the rest of her medication till she got healthy again.
If she were to continue the painkiller for just a day she might be no more. There is always a bad side of self-medication and it's not advisable in any way. If at worst we can't attend a hospital then we should seek the attention of a professional nurse or doctor or go for tests and checkups first.
This is my response to the HIVE LEARNERS weekly prompt in hive learners community for the Week 130 Edition 1 and the topic to be discussed is SELF MEDICATION IS IMPORTANT
