A wee rant - and not brexit-related!

I swear to you I saw a meme on Facebook tonight that said something along the lines of: "Doctors should be paid to get people off medication, not for putting them on medication." But, of course, this is Facebook we're dealing with so when it dawned on me (a minute later) what the meme said, I couldn't find it again.

This is personal to me - and many others.

If you or your partner or your child suffers from a chronic illness - say asthma, diabetes, a heart complaint, Parkinson's or depression - medication is a must. And it needs to be taken regularly for it to have any effect. There are plenty of us in this situation.

I had a stroke when I was 35. It took a while to get a diagnosis. At the time, I was given one basic medication: Propranolol. It regulates the heartbeat, reduces anxiety and cuts the chances of having migraines (it was during a migraine that I had the stroke and man, I was anxious about it afterwards). Since then, I've been prescribed medication to regulate my blood pressure. I also take vitamin D tablets. Well, we live in Scotland. Let's just say our exposure to sunshine isn't always that great.

35 years later, I'm still around and I'm very grateful to the NHS for the treatment I've had. During these 35 years, I've had to listen to people telling me they couldn't consider taking medication all the time: "I can't even swallow an aspirin," they say. My usual reply is: "Aye, but you would if your life depended on it."

If you were in the early stages of Motor Neurone Disease or Alzheimer's and were offered medication that would improve your quality of life, would you take it? You bet your life you would.

If you had just been diagnosed with cancer, would you accept the medication offered? You'd be daft not to, wouldn't you? (Although I'm told there are quite a few people who start but don't finish chemotherapy because they can't bear the side-effects. I sympathise with them but I don't understand them - medication is the last chance hotel with cancer).

It's not clear to me what the person who wrote the meme was getting at: are they suggesting doctors are over-prescribing certain drugs? Or prescribing useless drugs?

I'm hard-pushed to decide  which medications we could cut out: statins? Or the vaccine against Human Papilloma Virus now being given to young people? Maybe we could cut out measles inoculations?

Unless the writer of the meme is an expert, their opinion is worthless. I'll stick with the doctors.