Posted by UgottaHaveHope on January 13, 2007, at 0:52:17
RN320: Thanks for your post. It always is a big help to hear how others are doing on Emsam, good or bad. And its good to hear more good than bad.
A few questions: Were you bothered by anxiety before even taking Emsam? Is your primary diagnosis anxiety or depression? What made you go up in doses of Emsam each time? Were you on the food restrictions at 9mg? Did you ever have problems sleeping while wearing the patch? How long have you been on it overall?
= = = = = = = =Hi Michael-
Initialy for me, it took about 8 days at 6 mg for me to see much of anything- I thought I was able to maybe do more in a day, but didn't feel that it did anything for my mood, and if anything I had a slight increase in anxiety. My pdoc said that he noticed positive changes. At 9mg, it took about 10 days to see an improvement, and this time I felt better, could accomplish more and saw a slight decrease in mylevel of anxiety. Family and friends noticed a big difference. At 12mg the anxiety has greatly decreased, mood, outlook, motivation etc have all dramatically increased. This was the first Christmas in 6 years that I looked forward to, participated in completely and enjoyed myself!Try not to get discouraged.....I've had many obstacles along the EMSAM path, but they've all been able to be worked around or managed. You just need to keep an open mind. It's somewhat of a "miracle drug" for me, but I still have problems with when I become overstressed. I fall apart completely, but it's more manageable. It was very hard for me to always stay in a positive frame of mind, but I forced myself to reframe every negative into a positve or hopeful because I knew that I was running out of options and I needed to give it a fair chance. When you've had so many other caomplete failures with other drugs, it's hard to get your hopes up....the best I could do was "cautiously optimistic" at the beginning, but then I became so much more positive about it (probably an effect of the EMSAM itself!!) once I started to really feel and see the improvement in the quality of life.
Regards,
/m- self dubbed "queen of EMSAM"!!
poster:UgottaHaveHope
thread:721889
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070107/msgs/721889.html