Hugs, fist-bumps and other gestures of solidarity with everybody dealing with more medications than they want to this season. I've been taking between seven and fourteen pills a day since my angioplasty in June, and ... yeah, side effects and interactions suck.

And, since this is Bitches and nothing is TMI, someday I'll tell the story of how mid-1970s blood pressure medication probably put at least one nail in the coffin of my parents' marriage. But it's not a good holiday tale.

tacklehugs Karl Good to see you my dear.

Yeah, all 3 of my siblings take both diabetes meds and BP meds. One is now dealing with serious kidney disease and has to stop taking them. One is on a fix it mission similar to mine and has cut down a lot. The third has MS and doesn't give a shit. Takes his diabetes, BP, and other meds and pops reeses pieces.

I'm too poor--and too stubborn--to practice "throw pills at it" management, and she just wants to keep adding more.

That was the problem I had with a previous doctor! A med for this and a med for that, another med to control the side effects of that med, another med to control the side effects of THAT med... ffs. I went to him a reasonably healthy woman with mildly high BP and ended up on 8 medications, edema in my feet so bad I could hardly walk, persistent wracking cough, and still had slightly high BP. When he wanted to add in a statin, I put my swollen foot down. After a year of his bullshirt, I broke up with him and stopped taking all the meds. I felt better immediately. I'm very cautious now about adding more meds to the daily menu. I'm on 4 now that I do believe I need - AD, BC, BP, Metformin - and I don't want any more. Besides the pain meds which are temporary (dammit, they are).

Karl!!!

I thought my 10 a day was bad!

I do not know this K2. I will research. My bones need help.

Tired now. Will be back around tomorrow.

Good night! I am turning my computer off in 3 minutes myself.

In yuck news, DH called on his way to b-ball tonight to let me know road closures were back because the orange one is back to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving. Besides the damage he does to the rest of the country and world he screws up traffic every weekend now until next spring for my neighbors.

eta: you know it is my bedtime when it took me 4 minutes to write that post.

I'm in favor of meds when they're needed (if they can be tolerated, obviously). But I won't push them on someone as long as no one tries to tell me to stop taking mine.

Plus I wouldn't be able to have a kitty without good old Claritin and Flonase.

Flonase helps my allergies more than anything else I ever tried. I use the Sensimist version. I still use Nasacort too, now probably my nose will fall off from mixing them or some weird shirt like that.

I cannot take the nose sprays. They give me a migraine.

I am almost recovered from sinus surgery. They feared many polyps and possibly cancerous. Turned out to be just a few polyps and a big ball of infection. Yay! Recovery means I have become best friends with my neti pot.

Etfix stupid autocorrect neck pot.

Meds are an absolute miracle for people who can take them. I had horrible allergies as a kid and at about age 12 I started refusing to take the antihistamines. Walking around in a daze sucked worse than inflamed running eyes and nose. They had developed better ones when I was an adult, but I couldn't take them when I got pregnant. That led me to acupuncture, which resulted in my ability to dance in the pollen if I wanna.

The DNA swab thing they gave me to test for medication issues reported I couldn't take codeine, tramadol, hydrocodone, warfarin, methadone, NSAIDs, and a bunch more stuff that listed just didn't work, or worked too much. The results didn't surprise me since this was right after I cycled through 5 pain killers after surgery to find one that would stay down.

At least we know drug addiction won't be listed with my vices!

Wow, Laura. That's a lot of meds you can't take.

GUD!! I just finished Cog and the Steel Tower. That was such a good book. I really enjoyed it. I now NEED to read Cog and the Copper Dragon. Go you, man. Nice work.