If you are currently do this to save money, please stop. It could get you into a lot of trouble.
The other day, a friend was telling me how miserable she was because she had yet another sinus infection. Rather than taking the time and the money to see a doctor (or even call her doctor for a prescription), she decided to self medicate with some of her son’s leftover antibiotics. This way they wouldn’t go to waste and she didn’t have to pay for a new prescription.
This is not a good idea in so many ways. For one thing, with antibiotics, it is important that there are no leftovers. Antibiotics are prescribed precisely in the amounts needed ti kill off the infection. If you stop taking them before the whole dosage is done, you could just be making your bacteria stronger next time. Drug-resistant bacteria is a real problem for everyone.
By taking just a little of her son’s leftover antibiotics until she felt a little better, she was probably helping the bacteria to continue a stronger fight in her system, and thus making it harder to get over the recurrent sinus infections.
Different antibiotics treat differently. Your doctor will prescribe different types of antibiotic for different types of bacteria. Thus, an abscess in your tooth is probably caused by a different strain of bacteria than is an infected cut on your finger and mixing the two may be useless or even harmful.
Antibiotics aren’t the only medications that can hurt you. Never share prescriptions.
A Better Way…
There are still ways to save on prescription medication, and these methods are a lot smarter than sharing medication from some one else’s prescription.
Ask your doctor for samples. Your doctor may have enough free sample medication to treat your condition.
Ask your doctor to write you a three month prescription. You’ll only pay one co-pay every three months instead of every month.
Call your doctor and ask if you can use existing medication. Be very specific about the name of the medication and the dosage. For example, that cream to treat excema may work on another form of dermatitis, but get permission first and don’t be surprised if your doctor says no.
There are many ways to save money (the Frugal Living Blog has thousands of articles on the subject), but sharing prescription medicine should not be one of them.
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