I've always disliked the whole self medication thing. Mostly because people tend to overdo it and assume that they could replace the positions of physicians. A number of times, I saw people who took drugs without consultations. It wasn't unusual to have painkillers, antibiotics, and other medications that combat minor health challenges, especially in the homes of people who had young children. I'm not even referring to those.
In this society, in Nigeria, as an instance, people self-medicate a lot. They always assume that because the basic symptoms for most illnesses are fever, headache, cold, running nose, and the rest, then what they suffer from is malaria(and/or typhoid).
How I've noticed that it works around here is that when a person feels down, they just walk into a pharmacy(I'd refrain from Eben talking about the chemists) and ask for malaria drugs. No tests done, no complaints made. What's even more annoying is the person telling the pharmacist to give him/her drugs for a stipulated amount. It always pisses me off.
Well, there are some who open up about what symptoms they feel, and the professional goes on to make prescriptions. While this is a tad better, I still think that proper examination and visit to a doctor is necessary.
There's something very irksome about our attitude to our health, and it is how ignorant we are even in our ignorance. Read that again. It is how everyone assume themselves as physicians. It's more like a competition for a person to not seem bereft of the knowledge of a health problem. And that's why, when you tell your friend/neighbor how you feel about your failing body, they always have a solution. They know what you should take or do to help cure it cause, either it's worked for them or a friend to a brother of a friend found cure using it.
That is why abuse is always happening. These days, people have on their shelf one drug that can cure tens of diseases, and I'm not talking a headache or fever but actual severe predicaments.
I've once written about an uncle who, alongside taking drugs prescribed by a physician, took local concoctions amd other drugs that some persons advised him to. It was terrible.
Let me tell you a story. So, when I was much younger, we had this neighbour who despised going to the hospital. According to him, it was waste of money as after all what doctors would prescribe is malaria drugs. And so for everytime he felt whatever symptom, he downed 'malaria and typhoid' drugs. If the issue wasn't severe, he took paracetamol. And you know what? The 'ordinary, basic' paracetamol was what almost destroyed him. He'd take it at the slightest fever and he took it far too often. Say he takes it by now and feels some relief and maybe in the next two hours, he feels the pain rising, he pops it again.
The day when he fell so sick that his remedies couldn't remedy the situation, so much that he was rushed to the hospital, it took bags upon bags of drip to cleanse his system. We learned that some sickness had been eaating him up and building in him while he thought it was malaria and was combating that.
See, it's okay to take painkillers if one everyday ailment pops up, but there should be a limit. There's hundreds of diseases out there bearing similar symptoms. We need to know what exactly is wrong before attacking it. Cause, haba nau, there's a reason why we have trained medical professionals.
Thanks for gracing this post.
Greetings!