Posted by stargazer2 on November 26, 2007, at 15:30:25
In reply to Re: MAOI's, Treatment resistant depression. » sonic_gb, posted by FredPotter on November 26, 2007, at 13:55:24
Sorry to hear of your 40 year struggle. That is remarkable that you had the will to persist and continue to fight on despite feeling depressed, etc. Did you have any periods of time during that 40 years that your symptoms receded to the point you could function relatively well and work?
Where do you live? Were you hospitalized because of it? Did you have ECT or other procedures like TMS or VNS?
I have a > 30 year history overall, but really a 25 year history starting with a therapist, then a pdoc that put me on Nardil as the second med I tried and bingo, I was cured until 2 years later when it pooped out. I then had 2 years of success with Marplan until Roche pulled it off the market in 1994. Then I had probably 10 years where my treatment was marginal taking every SSRI known to man until a combination of Celexa, wellbutrin and adderall helped for about 3-4 years.
This led up to the past year and a half when I crashed an becam unable to work or really do much of anything productive. I asked my pdoc if I could retry Marplan again (with no relief), Cymbalta and Emsam with various adjunctive meds,including Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon, Abilify, Lamictal and Seroquel. Probably not all of them, just the ones I remember.
Then at my insistence I retried the "New, unimproved" Nardil this past May and worked up to 60 mg with one relapse at 45 mg.
Nothing is easy as far as Treatment resistent depression(TRD) is concerned. There were many times I almost gave up.
Today I take Nardil, Synthroid (after seeing an endocrinologist)for his input on TRD, and just recently Deplin. I stopped the nortriptylline I was taking for about 4 months as I didn't think it was doing much of anything and there have been no changes at all having stopped it.
I'm happy to hear so many of us have responded to nardil and disappointed so many pdocs are not familiar with it, since it can work well for those with TRD, and I don't find the diet or precautions very difficult to follow.
Stargazer
poster:stargazer2
thread:797131
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20071125/msgs/797165.html