Pills Ahoy

Well I feel at the mo to be totally inundated with pills of one sort or another.

On Sunday we started taking the malaria pills (2 everyday and an extra 2 once a week), we have been taking the B1 tablets for just over a week now, plus I take my normal pill every day. It can get quite hard to rememeber whats going on.

The malaria pills are an interesting bunch, i've never before had to take tablets that didn't taste very nice. In fact I don't think I can remember tablets tasting of anything before but these defo do, a very funny taste that is very unpleasant, you do not want to leave them on your toungue too long!

The B1 tablets have their interesting side too, they turn your pee illuminous green! Now if you remember from my last post we have 2 kinds of B1 tablets, cheap and expensive ones. Now im alternating the days on which I take them because basically we worked out that the expensive ones are twice as potent as the others. Anyway it's the expensive, potent ones that make your pee green. They are massive things as well, quite hard to get down and I really hope they work after all this.

B1 Tablets

Well im totally gutted about my recent B1 tablet purchasing.

My bro and dad are regular shoppers at a place called Bean Freaks, which is kind of a health food / vitamin store and on one of their recent trips they picked up a leaflet which advertised B1 tablets. B1 tablets basically are supposed to help keep mosquitoes away by making you give off some sort of odour (which can't be smelt by humans).

This sounded like an ace idea for Nepal as apparently the mosquitoes are rife over there, so along we trotted and bought 2 bottles each containing 30 tablets for just over £6 each. We actually needed 3 bottles but 2 was all they had in stock so we planned to go back today when they would have had another delivery in.

However on the way to Bean Freaks we happened to be passing Holland & Barrett www.hollandandbarrett.com and thought it was worth a look to see if they stocked B1 tablets. Oh boy did they! A pack of 100 was just under £2. I could not believe the price difference! We were well and truly had at Bean Freaks.

My advice to anyone needing B1 tablets is to run straight on past Bean Freaks and into Holland & Barrett.

Credit / Debit Cards

Im expecting to use my cards quite a bit in Nepal as we arn't planning on taking too much local currancy with us. I have just recently had a new debit card and a little pamphlet with it said that for each transaction abroad I would be charged £1.50! Has this always been the case?? I don't think I have ever checked before as well i've always been working and haven't worried too much about it. £1.50 seems like a lot though.

Also my bro has told me that he needs to notify his bank when he is planning on using his card abroad (he is with Barclays, im with Halifax). Im not sure if I need to do this with mine, i've never done it before but then it might be a new thing they have bought in. I know back in the day you used to have to tell your bank in case they thought the card had been stolen but I thought with everone leaving the country every 2 mins these days that they had done away with things like that.

Malaria Tablets

I am about at the end of my tether with malaria tablets specifically and my doctors in general. There has been so much confusion over what injections we need for Nepal and what and how we go about getting our malaria tablets.

Today I had another doctors appointment, as the nurse who did my last injections suggested I see the doctor and get them to write me out a perscription as the type of tablets you need depend on the pill you take etc.

Anyway I get to the docs about 10 mins early (big mistake!) and then sit there for a further half hour until they actually call me in. The normal doc was off ill so there was a lovely hady standing in for him however she tells me that the doctors do you write the malaria tablet perscriptions, the nurses do!? and then they just sign them. Ahhhhh. I asked if maybe she could write one out since I was there with her but she couldnt, she wrote some notes on my file and said the nurse would sort it out when I next saw her.

It's just crazy that there can be so much confusion within one tiny doctors surgery, so they never talk to each other? The one good thing though was that the stand in doc was very nice and did spend some time checking things on the net for me re whether any of the tablets interact with the pill im on (they don't) and giving me advice on precations to take against malaria in the first place.

Well Friday is my next injection appointment with the nurse so we will see if I actually get a perscription out of that!?