Posted by Florencia on February 4, 2003, at 12:07:17
I recently was diagnosed with bipolar illness. I have my own HR consulting business, am a published writer and am a single parent to a 16 year old son. People tell me I look 25. I am 35 years old, very health & diet conscious (workout daily) and in shape. I am a closet smoker. For years I think I self-medicated my illness with marijuana, which I stopped doing about 6 months ago. I was first given Neurontin and Paxil for my bipolar and although it stabilized my sleep and helped with OCD at first, it also made me feel out of it. I got headaches, chronic constipation and experienced weight gain rapidly (8 lbs in a month) despite going to the gym daily and limiting calorie consumption to 1500 day. I've been in individual therapy for 4 weeks and its helping--I tried group therapy for 5 or 6 sessions and hated it. After a month, the meds stopped working completely and I had a manic episode again. My doctor took me off the Neurontin (600 mg day) and Paxil (20 mg day) and put me on Prozac--I am taking 10mg day and increase to 20 tomorrow. Also take Zanax to sleep or calm down if I feel too excited. Problem is, I still feel manic. Doctor is urging me to try lithium but I am so resistent and scared. I've read too many books and heard nightmare stories--also, my brother Joey who is manic depressive and schizophrenic is on it and he cannot work and is on disability. He is like a vegetable sometimes. What should I do???? I don't want to lose myself. Is there any med that works to treat this without horrific side effects of constipation, weight gain, naseau, vomiting, etc? Because given the side effects of what I was on, I'd take a mild manic high any day. Oh, and my brother who takes lithium also has to take a zillion other pills to counteract the side-effects of the lithium. And he wears Depends when he goes out in public because he has to pee like every 2 seconds. He is only 47 years old. I don't want that to happen to me.
Anybody out there with any advice????
poster:Florencia
thread:139331
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030204/msgs/139331.html