Posted by mair on December 1, 2003, at 11:35:26
In reply to Re: Ever feel like letting everything go?, posted by Camille Dumont on December 1, 2003, at 11:15:15
Camille - I am a person who generally avoids meds changes because the changeover is so awful for me, even when I've changed over to a drug that ends up being effective. I have little tolerance for side effects. However, I've also come to realize that sometimes very small adjustments can make a huge difference. A couple of years ago I had started taking serzone, prescribed by a new pdoc (for me). I had a horrible time with it and my mood was steadily deteriorating. I didn't want to contact my pdoc because I was afraid she'd take me off it and I really wanted to give it the best chance I could. However, I kept getting increasingly suicidal and my therapist kept bugging me about contacting my pdoc particularly since the worst of the deterioration, in her view, occurred after I started serzone. Under some duress, I finally emailed my pdoc. Her sole suggestion was that I simply take my dose at a different time of day. This made a HUGE difference. Ultimately, we dropped this drug because it never really did anything positive for me, but the slight adjustment we made to dosing times at least stopped the deterioration which was probably partially drug-related to begin with. The point of all of this is that I've been surprised on many occasions to discover that the reaction I got from a pdoc or therapist was different from the reaction I expected. I think sometimes we presume too much.
Also understand that when you are depressed, it's easy to talk yourself into the notion that the most obvious things won't help, or can't be done. I know with me, everything seems so much more complicated when I'm not feeling well.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:285026
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031123/msgs/285536.html