Tuesday, July 5, 2011

bad health shit

What I really would like to be writing about is Sexy Jewish Men -- and that was before re-watching Catfish, whose subject, Nev Schulman, is a prime example.

But Sexy Jewish Men will have to wait a bit, since they're rather eternal and Bad Health Shit happened last
week.

Basically, I'd gone to see a new psychiatrist, since my old one took no insurance.  I felt that my lamotrigine (Lamictal) was working really well except for a few days every couple of months, when I would experience a depressive "dip."  So he increased my lamotrigine -- doubled it.  After about four days, I felt a little dizzy, but I looked it up and found it was a common but harmless side effect.  Then, a few days after, I started to feel extremely dizzy and disoriented, couldn't type straight, couldn't talk straight...bad.  This was exactly a week ago, and my husband met me downstairs and took me to the ER at Maimonides (we could have gone nearby to Beth Israel, but we're both pretty attached to Maimonides and my general doctor is also attached there).  They did tests and it didn't seem to be anything more wrong than the higher dose of meds, so I was told to reduce it to the old level and sent home.  I was told an appointment had been made for me with my psychiatrist for the next day, but when Barry called the psychiatrist's office, it seemed the appointment was for Friday, not Wednesday, and I made a huge fuss, etc etc.  I mostly recovered on Wednesday, and on Thursday decided to see my regular doctor , partly because I had what seemed to be a rash, which can be a serious side effect of lamotrigine.  So he sent me to a dermatologist, who said it was bug bites.  Back to work Friday.

It doesn't really sound so bad now, but it was horrendous on me and on Barry.  I'm not used to that sort of loss of control, or being on the receiving end of hospital care.  (The hospital thing actually went pretty well until there was some discussion of keeping me overnight, and the idea of being kept overnight in psych scared the hell out of me.)  But the whole thing also made me feel pretty leery about medications, especially psych meds.  No one even really knows exactly why or how most of them work, which is why they always try out different ones on different patients. 

My plan now is to see a new doctor and perhaps go back on Prozac, which "pooped out" on me after around nine years (believe it or not, that's the actual term psychiatrists use), but worked well until then and never had any bad side effects.  I'm taking the low dose of lamotrigine now, but I'm not happy about it.  It's some dangerous shit.  And considering that I take something like 10 prescription meds (antidepressives, antianxiety, blood pressure, diabetes), I'm not liking the whole prescription meds thing at all.

We'll get to Sexy Jewish Men soon, I promise.  Meanwhile, look at some of the pictures of Yaniv Schulman at IMDB.  And look up Oded Fehr, while you're at it.  That should get you all ready for that topic.

1 comment:

  1. Scary med shit is more like it!! Poor you!!! I understand. I'm off antidepressants for now (off Cymbalta) and am loathe to start another. Since i started seeing the nutitionist so much other stuff is starting to normalize (cut back diabetes meds), that I'm wanting to see what happens not being on meds. I'm glad you're okay. Keep me posted.

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