Changing Medications (Level of Trust Required)

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

5 hours ago, mlooney said:

I hate being trival while Prof was worried about, you know, deadly diseases, but I have a sinus headache.

Not trivial! Mrs. Prof has a sinus infection, and she sounds like crap. Sinuses are nothing to sneeze at.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

22 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Not trivial! Mrs. Prof has a sinus infection, and she sounds like crap. Sinuses are nothing to sneeze at.

*groans*

*snatches list away from JML's evil twin /me*

*makes addition to list, muttering and growling*

*passes list back to /melooney*

[mlooney 3,417]

59 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Agreed with tOH—this is not an insignificant problem. In fact, something similar led me to start the thread so long ago. I was going off of Cymbalta and onto something else, if memory serves. The transition was a real pig. I can sympathize.

Yep, that was it.  And getting "brain zaps", something I've never had and I'm glad of that.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

4 hours ago, mlooney said:

And getting "brain zaps", something I've never had and I'm glad of that.

Ah, yes, the brain zaps. Just like being stoned, but without any of the fun. Thankfully, none of my transitions since could match the one off of Cymbalta. I would not wish that on anyone here, or on almost all of the people I know.

[mlooney 3,417]

Good News! (™ James May)

I got my medicare card today!

Bad New! (™ J. Michael Looney)

It isn't valid until 03/01/2017  (That's March 1st for those people that might think that means 3rd of January)

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

On November 18, 2016 at 10:00 AM, ProfessorTomoe said:

Good news from the hematologist—no leukemia! His nurse called and said what they'd found in the first test was just a glitch. Whew! Still have to see him about the high white blood cell count, but that's nothing by comparison.

Still low on my Vitamin D2 levels, though. My regular doctor called in another prescription for the heavy-duty stuff (50,000 IU).

Woo hoo!  I read this just before going to a Dublin O'Shea performance, and it gave me one more excellent reason to dance!

On November 18, 2016 at 5:39 PM, mlooney said:

I have real pseudoephedrine, but I would like to sleep tonight, because Saturday is one of the few days I need to be functional during the day time, so taking too much pseudoephedrine is Not A Good Idea.  

For me, I'm usually tired enough when I'm stuffy that it's more important to be able to breathe and not hurt.  I take enough pseudoephedrine to make me comfortable, and sleep follows much better that way than if I were still stuffed up.

On November 19, 2016 at 6:15 PM, Vorlonagent said:

I was on Zoloft for 2+ years and I started feeling dead inside instead of muted emotions early this year.  I dropped the stuff cold and made it through the worst 4 weeks of withdrawl but now all my emotions tend to spike to extremes.  Better than feeling dead inside but I'm not always coping well.  I feel social anxiety anyway.  Now, my emotions take any excuse to crank it up to curl-up-in-a-ball fear or defensive anger.  I'm working through it but it is not fun right now.

You've probably heard this already, but they say exercise can really help with depression.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

6 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

You've probably heard this already, but they say exercise can really help with depression.

As a depressive I can say that this is true. Unfortunately, a deep depressive episode also all too often saps one of the will and energy one needs to get moving. It may readily turn into a can opener-inside-the-can kind of problem where moving yourself around would help but you simply cannot make yourself move. I try to compensate by making a point of getting at least some exercise when I have the surplus for it, but I still experience times where I can barely make myself leave my bed and where anything beyond that is simply out of the question.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

It may sound like a very odd thought, but given that most mental illnesses have a list of symptoms and say you must meet a certain number of them to qualify for the diagnosis....I sometimes wonder if it's possible to suffer from "clinical depression" without actually feeling the crushing unhappiness part.  There have been times I've thought I show a number of the common symptoms, but don't actually feel depressed.  Perhaps, some day, they'll decide that this is a Spectrum of disorders with associated syndromes, rather than one absolute specific yes-or-no disorder.  Like autism spectrum disorders.

(I have met a fair few people with what used to be called Asperger's who are annoyed that they no longer have their own separate diagnosis, but that's a different can of worms....)

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

It may sound like a very odd thought, but given that most mental illnesses have a list of symptoms and say you must meet a certain number of them to qualify for the diagnosis....I sometimes wonder if it's possible to suffer from "clinical depression" without actually feeling the crushing unhappiness part.  There have been times I've thought I show a number of the common symptoms, but don't actually feel depressed.  Perhaps, some day, they'll decide that this is a Spectrum of disorders with associated syndromes, rather than one absolute specific yes-or-no disorder.  Like autism spectrum disorders.

It doesn't really sound strange to me. I strongly suspect that depression may be linked to other problems and interact with them synergistically. For example, I also suffer from SAD (season-affective disorder) which means I tend to feel drained of energy in the darker half of the year. Relatedly, my late mother was an alcoholic on top of being depressive, which certainly wouldn't have helped her depression any. Add the fact that I am all but certain that she also suffered from undiagnosed Diabetes 2 and it is not surprising that she died at a rather early age.

[PSadlon 88]

On 11/19/2016 at 0:50 AM, The Old Hack said:

*groans*

*snatches list away from JML's evil twin /me*

*makes addition to list, muttering and growling*

*passes list back to /melooney*

I'm kinda torn, having suffered from allergies most of my life I appreciate the truth of the pun but don't wanna encourage that behavior.

[PSadlon 88]

On 11/20/2016 at 11:18 AM, The Old Hack said:

It doesn't really sound strange to me. I strongly suspect that depression may be linked to other problems and interact with them synergistically. For example, I also suffer from SAD (season-affective disorder) which means I tend to feel drained of energy in the darker half of the year. Relatedly, my late mother was an alcoholic on top of being depressive, which certainly wouldn't have helped her depression any. Add the fact that I am all but certain that she also suffered from undiagnosed Diabetes 2 and it is not surprising that she died at a rather early age.

Quite it doesn't surprise me at all most of the time my depression expresses itself as a mild to moderate funk, not crushing sadness or anything but a feeling where things don't matter and I end up existing more than living. At most I might feel "alright" or find something somewhat annoying but that's all I feel capable of feeling then. That's not to say there are periods of what one could really call happiness or sadness but mostly it's numbness and fatigue and even when you know what would help just making yourself do what you need to is just more energy than you have to spare.

[mlooney 3,417]

More or less since I have moved into this apartment I have been having very strange dreams.  At first I chalked it up to the move, but I should be over that by now. So I looked up side effects.  Abnormal dreams is in the 10% range for cymbalta.  Well that explains that. I suspect that I will be changing meds come March.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Either that, or start keeping a dream journal, take out a PO box in Schenectady, and sell the dream ideas by mail-order....

[mlooney 3,417]

49 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Either that, or start keeping a dream journal, take out a PO box in Schenectady, and sell the dream ideas by mail-order....

That would require either a laptop or keeping a keyboard for the tablet around.  My hand writing is on close order to Edward's for lack of readability   I've taken notes from a client in the wee hours of the morning and had no idea what I wrote 5 hours later.  This can be embarrassing  for an on call tech support person.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

That would require either a laptop or keeping a keyboard for the tablet around.  My hand writing is on close order to Edward's for lack of readability   I've taken notes from a client in the wee hours of the morning and had no idea what I wrote 5 hours later.  This can be embarrassing  for an on call tech support person.

That reminds me of an infamous shopping list once handed to me by my father. It went something like this:

 

A pair of socks, or possibly a pound of sugar.

A small packet of something illegible.

A fertilised oven shaver.

A bagful of Sputtermaize.

 

It was amazing. It is an old joke that M. D.s are supposed to have utterly unreadable handwriting but in my father's case it is actually all too true.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

That would require either a laptop or keeping a keyboard for the tablet around.  My handwriting is on close order to Edward's for lack of readability   I've taken notes from a client in the wee hours of the morning and had no idea what I wrote 5 hours later.  This can be embarrassing  for an on call tech support person.

There were a couple of residents while I was a vet student who you had to talk to for at least a couple of minutes on any late-night/wee-hours phone call before they were actually awake enough to understand what you were calling about, make a sensible reply, and/or remember the call the next day.

41 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

It is an old joke that M. D.s are supposed to have utterly unreadable handwriting but in my father's case it is actually all too true.

Indeed.  One of the student organizations raised money by selling T-shirts with a "Top Ten Reasons I'm Not In Medical School" list.  "My handwriting isn't bad enough" was somewhere in between "I don't know how to golf" and "Medical school is for wimps who want to learn one-eighth what a vet does in twice the time!"

[PSadlon 88]

My handwriting gives Edward Verres's a run for his money and I'm not even in the medical field.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

On 12/6/2016 at 8:55 PM, mlooney said:

Abnormal dreams is in the 10% range for cymbalta.

Welcome to the club. It's been my experience that the weird dreams never, ever go away, not even after a medication switch. Sometimes they get worse, sometimes they get not so bad. However, they've never completely gone away, except in cases where I was too tired to remember what happened overnight (and we're talking farking exhausted here).

I even got them when I was in the hospital in 2009 (the Great Gastric Bypass Disaster). At one point, the nurses were actually *overdosing* me on Cymbalta. I don't know about the dreams, but I know I was loopy as hell and couldn't focus on anything (e.g., telephone, TV remote, etc.) until my wife got them to fix the dose.

[mlooney 3,417]

31 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

It's been my experience that the weird dreams never, ever go away, not even after a medication switch.

Aren't you just a bundle of joy.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

6 hours ago, mlooney said:

Aren't you just a bundle of joy.

Sorry. It's been a rough morning.

[mlooney 3,417]

53 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Sorry. It's been a rough morning.

No problem.  Had more than a few of those of late myself.

[mlooney 3,417]

I have a wrong side of the head headache that I suspect is a sinus headache.  I've taken a decongestant and my first dose of analgesics, and I am waiting for them to kick in.  Not only is on my left side, which is not where I get migraine headaches but it is too far forward.  I think I maybe know too much about my headaches.

Late breaking news. While I was entering this on the tablet the analgesics kicked in.  Still have trouble breathing out of the left side, but that's minor.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

Late breaking news. While I was entering this on the tablet the analgesics kicked in.  Still have trouble breathing out of the left side, but that's minor.

Glad to hear you are feeling better.

[mlooney 3,417]

Based on frequency of them and the date I suspect I am having the last "classic" right frontal part of my head migraine of 2016.  Already taken drugs and I can feel them working, so that is good.  Of course this means I am going to be a bit loopy for a while.  Meh.

[Vorlonagent 442]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

Based on frequency of them and the date I suspect I am having the last "classic" right frontal part of my head migraine of 2016.  Already taken drugs and I can feel them working, so that is good.  Of course this means I am going to be a bit loopy for a while.  Meh.

Perfect time to be posting here...