Posted by englishman006! on March 28, 2007, at 5:08:38
In reply to My story -off meds!! (very long), posted by englishman006! on March 27, 2007, at 19:04:21
Sorry guys got tired, am a slow typist!
Well back to my story...
I waited and waited for the ssri to kick in which had now been changed to Aropax (Paxil). It had been one and a half months, still no sign of an improvement! I spent much of my time calling emergency help lines just to keep going. They kept telling me i could present myself to the ER which always resulted in "sorry the psychiatrist will not see you and we can't admit you as no beds unless your going to do yourself some harm.. give the meds some more time , your better off at home". etc.
My sister was over backpacking in the eatern states (over side of the country) I didn't want her to see me in this state (excuse the pun!) but needed help so badly. When i told the psychiatrist i was thinking of asking her to stay in Australia and fly over to Perth to look after me, he said "your not her responsibility, it would be pretty selfish".My private health insurance was only a couple of weeks from maturing, then i could stay at a private hospital, thank god. By that time i was on dex which would give me half an relief followed by 2 hrs of severe rebound anxiety and depression or if i used it regularly wouldn't even do that, but it gave me a glimpse of wellness and patchy but profound relief.
I finally got to hospital where my the Pdoc added Luvox for my anxiety and seroquel for sleep, which amazingly i wasn't have a problem with, infact i prayed for bedtime! It had me squirming with restless legs which even effected me right up to my stomach. Probably because of dopamine blockade. (RLS is caused by a dopamine defiency).
My Pdoc would visit me each morning EARLY! He hadn't seen me well so had no base line to compare. I could not express myself, everything came out wrong, i thought this guy must think i pretty dumb, after all he could only go by what he saw. I resorted to writing letters each morning just to be understood and show there was an intelligent person buried deep inside.
My therapist was young and really attractive and i got so fed up with making a fool of myself, i was so awkward, shy, couldn't hold my face right etc, i started refusing to go to class. It felt like Planet Of The Apes, the psychiatrists were the apes, and i was Charlton Heston. They treated me like i was a dumb animal cos i had lost my voice and couldn't show them any sign of intelligence... Wait until i get my voice back i thought, then they'll see.
I'd searched psycho-babble obsessively in an effort to find a way out of this hole, althougth i never chimed in. I kept going back to a post written by AndrewB (now a very close friend of mine). He talked about memantine and reversal of tolerance to dexamphetamine. The relief i was experiencing for the half hour it worked made me strong, whitty and confident ..could memantine make it last??? I printed off his information and pesented it to my Pdoc. He'd never heard of it but was open enough to say okay i want to try a few other things first but if they don't work we'll give memantine a trial!!
Thank god he wasn't a narcissist who thought he knew best and wasn't about to to take ideas from a patient. Especially since it was regarding some obscure drug indicated for alzheimers!
I have to go to work now : / but it does have a happy ending, i promise and i'm sorry for yesterday if i upset you Phillipa x
poster:englishman006!
thread:744434
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070327/msgs/744879.html