Posted by gardenergirl on September 6, 2004, at 3:46:49
In reply to Re: oh yeah... » Joslynn, posted by gardenergirl on August 10, 2004, at 3:03:32
I saw my pdoc for the second time on Friday. I can't remember if I posted all that happened in the month since I first saw her and she said I was acting like a child. Let me do a quick summary.
She upped my Nardil to 75 mg. This made me very very restless and agitated...like I was going to jump out of my skin. Goodness I HATE that feeling. Always have ever since I was a kid and had to take asthma medication periodically that had adrenaline in it. Yuck! So, call number one to her is returned within a couple of hours, from her home. She had me take the Nardil down a half a pill, which got rid of the restlessness.
Then I developed terrible insomnia, the early awakening kind. For some reason, no matter what time I went to bed, I could only "sleep" 4 hours at a time. I would get up and try some tea or exercise or something, but could never get back to sleep. After about a week like this, when the effects of losing so much sleep were really getting to me, I placed call number 2. Again, she returned it quickly. (I wonder if she always does this, or if she is skittish about the Nardil...?). She started me on Gabitril for sleep.
This (or maybe just the Nardil) caused a significant amount of edema this past week. My legs looked like over stuffed sausages, my hands and face were puffy, and I was incredibly fatigued and at times short of breath. I gained more than 10 pounds of fluid in a few days. When I got on the scale at one point and saw a certain weight I never in a million years EVER thought I would see, I just cried. I would have called her again, but I knew I was going to see her Friday. I quit the gabitril because I don't know if it was really helping with the sleep or if I was just adjusting to the Nardil dose finally. I also dropped back to 60 mg Nardil, which is where I started when I went to see her!
Okay, so I wallk in all nervous about how it went last time, and feeling like such a high-maintenance client since I had to call her twice, and would have called her a third time if my appt. weren't so soon. She agreed with me that it has been a rocky month and commented that I am medication sensitive. She proceeded to tell me about some new research that might explain this, which was cool because she was talking to me more like a peer. She agreed with the choices I had made to fix the edema, which worked, by the way...nothing like gaining and losing more than 10 pounds in one week!
She also talked to me a bit more about my mother, because I had mentioned that I had just seen my mom for shopping, and that may have triggered some depression this past week. She was very insightful about this, and really listened to me. She noted when I mentioned that my family of origin was Finnish, that a light box might help (it's very dark in Finland, and there is a high prevalence of depression...light boxes seeem to help there). We also talked about what I might try if I ever need or want to go off the Nardil. (Imipramine is what she mentioned.) But she agreed that now is not a good time to think about changing meds given the experience I had and since I am starting a new training job in a few weeks.
So, bottom line. She did not do CBT related stuff with me. It was more dynamic. I told her I thought I would just do med management, but that my T was okay if we were to do an adjunctive type of therapy, such as CBT. She seemed to downplay the two T thing again. I also told her that I really didn't like her when I left last time because of what she said, and she apologized! Wow! I also told her that although it felt like getting smashed with a two by four, it did have some therapeutic value. We also talked about physical and emotional sensitivity, and she seemed to really "get" this, too. Hmmm, was she a pod person before? Or is she now?
So I see her in a month, mostly because the meds thing was so rocky last month. But I feel much better about things. I probably will try to steer her more towards meds and physical stuff if she continues with Mom stuff. Although hearing it from another perspective was interesting.
Sorry so long. It's late and I have insomnia, so brain is a little disorganized.
Thanks again to all who gave me support and input. It was very helpful at the time. By the way, my T wondered if my need to call for pdocs was related to him leaving, since I did it same day. I suppose. But I really thought it was just that I finally got around to doing it. That silly unconscious!
Warmly,
gg
poster:gardenergirl
thread:373917
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040905/msgs/386950.html