The Risks of Self-Medication: Knowing When to Seek Professional Help

Many of us have been exposed to self-medication since we were young till we are now adults, our parents are doctors who specialise in giving us drugs without a prescription from the hospital and we are always fine after a few days, we see them as our gods and professionals when it comes to treating us from our sicknesses.

One of the reasons is due to a lack of finances to take us to the hospital. Most parents struggle to feed the family and when sicknesses show up, they prefer to perform one or two magic with these less expensive drugs being bought at the pharmacy to treat us hoping that they are effective in making us healthy because they will be like, "We are looking for money to feed, how do we raise money for the hospital?". For many of us, our parents rely so much on herbal concoctions which are very effective at some point but not for every sickness.

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I will be sharing two scenarios where I believe going for self-medication can be risky even though it costs less money. Self-medication can work well with minor illnesses like headaches, colds, slight fevers, migraine etc but when actually can one visit the hospital and not rely on self-medication?

There was a time I was seriously sick; I never knew what caused it but the common cause is malaria. My friends made herbal concoctions for me and bought some malaria drugs to treat me but the case was getting severe day by day and I started questioning the professionalism of the pharmacist. I was all wrong because I was treating a sickness with the wrong drugs.

I went home to get proper treatment but when I got to my aunt's place, she took it to be a spiritual thing and was at home for two days while she went into intense prayer firing at the invincible demons who were minding their businesses on other cases 😆. Poverty is a killer truly. It was not until my uncle came around, saw how my condition was and forcefully took out money from his pocket to take me to the hospital. I got there and was given the first drip before other treatment commenced.

The doctor told my aunt that if they had waited another day before bringing me to the hospital that day, things would have gone worse because according to him, it was typhoid and malaria that caused the sickness and it has gone deep inside my body. I was given more than 2 drips that night and the next day, I was discharged but I was still not feeling well until I travelled to my parents who took me to another hospital and more drips were passed on to me, I was in the hospital for 3 days before I was discharged.

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Another incident was my dad. A few months ago, he complained of a slight illness, we told him to get some drugs since we thought it was just a mild one. Just as he used to do, he bought some malaria drugs to treat himself but a few days later, he was still not feeling fine. We decided to send some money to visit the hospital but he was adamant and used the money for something else, bought another dose of malaria drugs but the case turned worse.

I was called some weeks later that he had been rushed to the hospital when he could not move his body on the bed. The cause was bacterial infection and we spent over 80k on him till he was discharged.

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One thing about self-medication is that sometimes we don't know what we are treating as we might be using the wrong drug. The major cause of sickness is malaria and we quickly get the drugs over the canteen without visiting the hospital to know what is wrong.

The best way to know when to stop self-medication is after using a drug and the symptoms persist after a few days, then it is a warning to visit the hospital where you will be treated and the right drugs will be prescribed to you by a professional doctor or nurse. It is not every time one would rely on self-medication, I understand that money plays a big role in making sure we are healthy, but that shouldn't make us rely on prescribing drugs by ourselves because it's risky and the surest way to kill ourselves.

Sometimes, we might not be using the right drug for whatever is wrong with us, it's just an assumption but when you aren't feeling well after using the drugs, it is important to do it the right way to become better by being diagnosed to know what is wrong with you. Self-medication does not work for all sicknesses, especially in cases of diabetes, stroke, cancer etc. Health is wealth and we must do the necessary things instead of going our way.

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