Posted by holymama on January 28, 2004, at 16:12:23
In reply to Re: I'm probably going against my pdoc's advice..., posted by girl1969 on January 28, 2004, at 4:26:03
Dear Girl, you sound a lot like me.
I wonder if the antidepresaant is making me rapid cycle. I never used to rapid cycle like this before antidepreaants. I just to cycle once every few/6 months or so.
I saw my pdoc today! I told him about what I was experiencing and how I took an extra 10mg lexapro and that snapped me out of the depression. He said "It doesn't work like that. It doesn't work that quickly in the bloodstream and the idea is to get a consistent level...blah blah blah..." I said "But what if it does work?" Something along the lines of "But it doesn't work like that". Yet again I said " But what if it does work?"
He looked uncomfortable for a minute and said "I don't usually do this, but I do have one other patient who takes a higher dose of an AD during part of the month, so you could take 20 mg instead of your usual 15 mg when you experience depression"
Yahoo! I didn't back down! When I hear a psychiatrist say "But it doesn't work like that", It makes me question what I experienced ...(was it really the extra dose that helped me? Was it all in my head?). I stood my ground though and he acknowledged that someone else says the same thing. It just proves that I know more about the medication than my doctor does. He doesn't take it-- he just reads about it!!
It still doesn't solve the problem of my rapid cycling every month, but at least I'll be able to deal with the depressions. I will get hypomanic I'm sure, and even more so if I'm increasing the dosage of my lexapro for a few days every month. The hypomania is fun, but I get kind of obsessive and it's a bit of a hardship. So at some point I'm sure I will need to go off the antidepressant, increase my trileptal or try another mood stabilizer (like lamictal -- that's my next choice, especially since it works well for depression, and that was always my main problem pre-meds. How do you like the lamictal, Girl?)
Thanks everyone. :)
poster:holymama
thread:305962
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040127/msgs/306537.html