So pharmacy, so good

 Went to collect my repeat prescription stuff this morning and got collared for the usual annual review with the pharmacist to make sure your meds are still right for you and that you understand what they're all  for. This is a good plan, I think. Helps to give people a chance to ask any questions without taking time at GP, and maybe catches any mistakes or abuses.

Once in the little office (bang next to the queue waiting for the till who can hear every word of the review through the door!) the pharmacist went through my diabetic stuff item by item and on to my Ramipril: "Yes, that's right, for high blood pressure."

Finally it was the turn of the Simvastatin. A well-timed opportunity to ask for a professional opinion. I explained that a diabetes nurse had suggested I try coming off the statins a couple of years ago to see if there was any improvement in symptoms. I also asked if she could check exactly when I was first put onto them. Can't trust my own foggy memory of it being not long before massive M.E. flare-up!

Trouble is, I've come back home without finding out. So much concentration to explain and listen and sit and stand and juggle the heavy doors etc etc that it completely slipped my mind. I know she'd started to look on the computer as I asked! Also, the doc has filled the order for needles instead of Ibuprofen painkillers. Both these items are on the second sheet of my repeat prescription. Did I tick the wrong item in my brainfoggy state? Probably!

The upshot was that the pharmacist agreed that it might do no harm at all to stop taking the statins for a while, and if I find an improvement in symptoms, then I can update my GP and go from there. 

All good. What surprised me a bit was that the pharmacist had never heard that statins could deplete the body's CoQ10. It seems widely documented online. It's even used as a selling point for CoQ10 outside the context of M.E./CFS, for those on statins! But she was still in the dark!

Given that, I was less surprised that she hadn't heard that many patients with M.E./CFS were also deficient in CoQ10.

But then, nothing surprises me about general lack of awareness of M.E. both in the medical world and the wider public and media!

Sneezing and shivering today which is just a cold, no doubt, not M.E. related at all. Slamming headache and achey now either with the virus or the after-effects of this morning's energy-heavy local outing. I felt less brainfogged before that, I think, and only woke twice or three times through the night (once at 2am with a hypo, when I stumbled out to get the restorative jelly babies from the bedside drawer and ended up tipping them all over the carpet. Still finding them this afternoon! Lol!)

Time will tell, but I'm still more than up for it!