Now every time we go to the physician, sooner or later he/she pulls out the requisition pad and orders a half dozen or more tests. There are many handy dandy tests that can show that we are all right and have nothing wrong with us. For my annual check up . I get at least a dozen tests. Then the doc cheerfully says, "If there's anything wrong I'll phone you." Then you never get a phone call and are left wondering if everything was okay or if he just forgot to phone. Except not with my doctor. My doctor phones at least half the time and sometimes it's to confirm that something is okay so I know if he says I'll phone if there's a problem, I know he'll phone.
Now the other day I visited my Doc to get my end of life form formalized. After we finished the form, he looked at me and said, "You know we should change medication Y when you're taking medicine X. That really amazed me.
It also got me thinking about the medications we take. I take 4 medications. Three of them may give me better life quality in the future. One I need to take to function at the present time. I know that many seniors take many more medications than 4. I know that some physicians play fast and loose with interactions which may occur . Some drug interactions can possibly be very harmful or even fatal.
So here's my suggestion for a test. We should have a test for the drug interactions that occur between the various drugs that have been prescribed. The test would detect all the new sludge left in our body from the various interactions. I'm sure that the drug interactions produce some very interesting new substances. Maybe some of the new substances may be useful? I doubt it. Maybe some of the harm done to our bodies could be detected and prescriptions stopped.
I'm sure that a small part of the requisition pad could be used for a spot to tick off a test to detect crap produced by the interaction of medications!
Just think how much better off we would be!