Do the caution sheets that accompany prescriptions freak you out?

I just picked up a new prescription today and being the somewhat anal retentive, too cautious person that I am, I always read the printout that Walgreens gives you with your medicine.

I don't know why because they always freak me out and I'm convinced that I could be experiencing any one of them, especially when you get to the possible side effects.

Let's see...
Check with your doctor if you experience severe depression, memory loss, swelling in fingers or ankles. <-- Well, not so bad.

Call the doctor immediately if you experience calf/leg pain or swelling, fainting, vomiting, vision problems, coughing up blood. <-- HUH?!?!

Sometimes you wonder if the cure is worse than the disease or illness.


So, do you read the labels? How do you deal with them? Have you ever had any side effects to prescriptions? How serious?

And most of the warnings seems to be directed toward the acetamenophen (Tylenol) in it, and the possibility of liver damage. Very little mention of the fact that this is a narcotic and may be habit-forming. (Which is why i got zero refills.)

dangerous than the oxycodone. Ironic eh? Tylenol is the most commonly used suicide poison in the US, and it gives you a long, lingering death as your liver shuts down. Also it has one of the narrowest bands between theraputic dose & toxic dose. And if you do something perfectly natural, like take tylenol to treat your headache that results from drinking all that alcohol - then you've potentiated the situation & may have obliterated your liver accidentally. meanwhile tylenol warns us that ibuprofen might block the beneficial blood-thinning effects of aspirin!

You're saying that you shouldn't take Tylenol after a night of drinking (not that it happens very frequently)?

Is there a pain reliever that is safer?

Oops, but that's not too easily available, eh? Ibuprofen is okay, - go for that - or aspirin. Also, drink a lot of water after your imbibing...part of a hangover is dehydration.

that if people closely read the warnings on OTC drugs, they'd be freaked out too.

Best advice in these situations I think is to see how old the drug is...if it's been around for decades and is still on the market by prescription then it's probably OK.

aside from the addiction risk. And it takes two weeks of regular use (at higher than therapeutic levels) to develop physical addiction.

In most of the other English-speaking nations of the world, narcotic painkillers can be purchased over the counter (not oxycodone, mostly codeine)...and marijuana is on its way to being decriminalised in most of them, as well. The insane paranoia with which opiates and marijuana are regarded in the US is sad and sort of frightening at the same time...guess that's what happens when your nation was founded by crazed puritanical religious nuts who've bequeathed a three-plus century legacy of repression to their posterity.

it just helped me figure out how to abuse it. Quick, someone call asscroft.

:-)

I always go to drugs-dot-com and get the full story on anything they prescribe.

That's where I found out that one of my blood presure meds was making my diabetes worse, and the OTHER BP pill was making me...Oh, never mind...TMI...

Now I take ONE pill for my BP and it works great....

Hey, while you're here....Ever hear of a ride called Paris-Brest-Paris?

the tv add that says, "erections lasting more than 4 hours indicate a serious medical condition". If they wanna sell more product they should change that to, "erections lasting more than 4 hours, while fun, indicate a serious medical condition".

discharge...I lost weight just seeing those commercials come on at dinner time :puke:

;-) Mine doesn't have that. I'm on Benicar for my BP and it seems to be controlling everything well.

Never had heard of that ride, but I just looked it up. Remind me about it again if I survive RAGBRAI. :-) Is completing that your goal?

Care to guess why I went from 260 to 305 in a year? :crazy:

It wasn't ALL from dropping the smokes...:-)

Yeah, since I'm too old for Le Tour, I've been kicking around the idea of Brevet riding...

BC Randoneurs has a pretty good website that explains most of it...Everything except WHY....:7

I occasionally like to get on MEDLINE and check out research studies on medical stuff. It can be helpful in sorting out some of the facts/fallacies within alopathic medicine. I think they have drug related stuff and it could give you actual percentages of people having particular side effects.