Against using medication
Q: My mother, who is a senior citizen, hates to take any pills. She prefers to use rest, diet and exercise as an alternative to drugs. But the doctor has told her she has to be on high blood pressure pills for the rest of her life. She hates this and doesn’t want to take them.
A: Taking pills can be a nuisance and a threat to a person’s sense of independence and well-being – but only if a person chooses to look at it that way.
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How you feel is determined by what you think, believe or say in your head. If you tell yourself you are weak or a failure if you take pills, that is exactly how you will feel.
If you are shopping for a CD player, you will likely look at the brand name, the nature of the warranty, the experiences your friends have had with CD players, and of course, the price before you make your decision. Those are objective facts. Of course the manufacturers want to influence in other ways, so the package, the color of the CD player, or even the approach of the salesperson may be designed to influence you to buy a certain brand.
We need to be objective with taking pills as well. Exactly what are the pills designed to do? What are the risks or inconveniences of any side effects? What are the risks or inconveniences that may occur if you choose not to take the pills?
Not taking high blood pressure pills increases the risk of a stroke, or even of death. Not taking the proper medications guarantees you’ll have a lot of discomfort and suffering. Not taking insulin, if you are a diabetic, is committing suicide.
I strongly support your mother’s approach to using rest, diet and exercise. If that regime will keep her blood pressure within acceptable limits, that’s fine. But if it doesn’t, I suggest she also take the medications prescribed by her doctor.
What can you do? You certainly can’t make her take the pills. But you can share with her how much you love her. You can share how much you and her grandchildren will miss her when she dies, but that you hope she will delay that event as long as possible, by following her doctor’s recommendations.
Don’t look at pills as a nuisance that you not only have to take, but have to remember to take. Choose to look on the pills as something that makes life a bit easier, a bit happier, a bit more comfortable, and in the case of high blood pressure medications, probably quite a bit longer.
