Changing Medications (Level of Trust Required)

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

44 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

<speculation>Do you take all the same pills AM and PM?  Do you spend enough time upright after taking the PM pills, washing them down adequately first?  If you've got a laxity in the lower esophageal sphincter, acid and pill-stew could end up leaking out of the stomach into the esophagus, which isn't designed nearly as tough and well-protected as the stomach.  That might fit the heartburn sensation.</speculation>

Official notice that this is layman's speculation, not medical advice, as I am not trained in your species.  I've done surgery on a tarantula, though!

Good speculation. No, I do not take the same mix of pills in the a.m. as I do in the p.m., mainly because my p.m. pills involve many that are geared toward helping me sleep. I also don't take certain pain medicines (e.g., Topamax) at night.

The "sit up" time is roughly equivalent post-pill-taking time, minus the bulk of the daylight hours. I wash them down with a full glass of liquid, just as I do in the morning.

I am not a tarantula.

[ijuin 572]

Speaking of surgery on tarantulas, I never really wrapped my mind around how one performs surgery on an exoskeletal organism, nor on how the cut in the exoskeleton heals.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Speaking of surgery on tarantulas, I never really wrapped my mind around how one performs surgery on an exoskeletal organism, nor on how the cut in the exoskeleton heals.

Well, in this case she has a laceration on her abdomen after her habitat fell (kinda like the 910 server), and I had to close it and give her a little fluids.  Luckily, one of my exotics books had a few pages on tarantulas, so I had something to refer to as I went.  Unfortunately, while she survived the surgery, her wound and trauma was just too severe, and she died later that day.  But at least I gave her a better chance!  (And managed to impress a guy who ran an S&M club (long story) ;-)

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Well, in this case she has a laceration on her abdomen after her habitat fell (kinda like the 910 server), and I had to close it and give her a little fluids.  Luckily, one of my exotics books had a few pages on tarantulas, so I had something to refer to as I went.  Unfortunately, while she survived the surgery, her wound and trauma was just too severe, and she died later that day.  But at least I gave her a better chance!  (And managed to impress a guy who ran an S&M club (long story) ;-)

Awwww. Poor tarantula. Yes, a few hours more life is a few hours more life, no arguing with that.

I will not address the S&M club. Too many Abby Sciuto references possible there.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

Okay, I counted my nighttime pills tonight. Total: 28, including two Sudafed pills that I normally don't take and not including a simethicone gas pill. I normally cut my Buspar pills in half because of my smaller stomach (gastric bypass), which would have given me 30 physical pills if I'd done it tonight. No heartburn, but plenty of gas. Most importantly, no nausea.

However, earlier today while trying to eat breakfast (a bacon & cheese sandwich), I got a sudden burst of nausea and had to take a Zofran pill. This was a couple of hours after I'd taken my morning pills, with no heartburn and no gas.

I don't know what to think at this point.

My strategy at this point is as follows: get my MRI done on Monday, follow up on Friday, see my psych doctor the following Tuesday, and—if my nausea continues—see my doctor about the nausea and try to get a referral back to my gastroenterologist, which I'll have to shoehorn around an appointment on April 7th with an electrophysiologist. Phew.

[PSadlon 88]

Nose is way clearer the swelling is reducing but every so often some scabbing in there breaks loose and I briefly sneeze out bloody boogers for a couple minutes.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

11 hours ago, PSadlon said:

Nose is way clearer the swelling is reducing but every so often some scabbing in there breaks loose and I briefly sneeze out bloody boogers for a couple minutes.

Eww. Crusting, it's called. Those are the worst. They'll eventually clear out, but the feeling (and the seeing) is gross while it's going on. You have my sympathies.

[PSadlon 88]

The crusting isn't quite as bad IMO as the occasional crack in the crust resulting in a short nosebleed.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

I started my 4-pill dose of Topamax this morning. I'm not sure what it's doing to me.

I have a headache, I'm dizzy, I'm tired, and I have a bit of a problem concentrating. The latter is most annoying, since I've had to pre-register with the MRI place for Monday's exam and get Mrs. Prof to deal with their screwed-up financial department (they quoted us two different prices before agreeing to bill for the amount our insurance plan says our copay should be).

I've got medicines waiting for me at CVS, but there's no way I could drive to get them in this state. I assume that's normal on my first day at this dosage.

[Vorlonagent 442]

I hope this works for you...

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

49 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I hope this works for you...

I thank you. It's supposed to be a temporary step to deal with whatever the problem is on the right side of my back. The MRI I'm having Monday is supposed to pinpoint said problem so they can treat and, hopefully, heal said problem.

I'm also hoping the MRI will give them a solution to treating the compression fracture I have in my L1 vertebra. That's another big pain source that's got worse since 2009 (Summer of 2009, not the winter when I had my gastric bypass disaster) and has made me unable to do anything around the house to help my wife. I can't even stand long enough to cook or barbecue, and those are things I used to love to do.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

BTW, I just checked the dosage. I'm now taking 200mg of Topamax. Don't know how relevant that is.

[mlooney 3,417]

I don't know if it's my medication, my lifestyle or the fact that I'm just a bit weird, but it seems that now my sleep cycle is in 4 or 5 hours blocks.  Awake for about 4, asleep for about 4.  I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.  I will mention it to the shrink next time I see him.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

31 minutes ago, mlooney said:

I don't know if it's my medication, my lifestyle or the fact that I'm just a bit weird, but it seems that now my sleep cycle is in 4 or 5 hours blocks.  Awake for about 4, asleep for about 4.  I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.  I will mention it to the shrink next time I see him.

You and I are approximately in sync. My sleep used to last only as long as I had Benadryl in me, which was good for about 4-5 hours. I would then wake up, raid the fridge, take another Benadryl, and it'd be off to sleep for another 4-5 hours.

The Topamax and hydrocodone have been messing with that, though. They're making me drowsy all day long. My "nighttime" usually runs from midnight until around 6:30 a.m. now.

[Vorlonagent 442]

Just now, mlooney said:

I don't know if it's my medication, my lifestyle or the fact that I'm just a bit weird, but it seems that now my sleep cycle is in 4 or 5 hours blocks.  Awake for about 4, asleep for about 4.  I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.  I will mention it to the shrink next time I see him.

I get my sleep on a 2 hours, wake, go back to sleep, 2 hours, wake, go back to sleep sort of schedule, but in my case that's not drug-related.  It's psychology-related. 

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

Just now, Vorlonagent said:

I get my sleep on a 2 hours, wake, go back to sleep, 2 hours, wake, go back to sleep sort of schedule, but in my case that's not drug-related.  It's psychology-related. 

Yeesh! Does it screw with your day?

[Vorlonagent 442]

2 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Yeesh! Does it screw with your day?

Some.  I Sometimes need a 5th cycle to be completely rested.  And that's before my personal habits (*cough*computergames*cough*) which sometimes result in me shorting myself sleep.

Unlike Mooney's 4 hours down, 4 up schedule, my 2 hour cycles run back to back with only 5-10 min of activity before going back to sleep.  I always assumed that I went through a complete sleep cycle and woke up when the cycle finished rather than sleeping through the reset and restart for the next cycle.  I may not be getting into the really deep levels of sleep as much as I could though.

 

[mlooney 3,417]

4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Unlike Mooney's 4 hours down, 4 up schedule, my 2 hour cycles run back to back with only 5-10 min of activity before going back to sleep.

I was doing that for a while.  A lot more when I was getting the Cymbalta out of my system,

[mlooney 3,417]

I no longer have a happy.  I have a micro stone.  Or possibly even a full sized stone, this hurts like a [redacted]

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

I finally have my new prescription glasses.  Bifocal safety lenses for work and a pair of readers for, well, reading.  The readers let me see the writing on the computer without acting like a fish-eye lens for my peripheral vision .

[Vorlonagent 442]

On 3/10/2017 at 8:26 PM, mlooney said:

I was doing that for a while.  A lot more when I was getting the Cymbalta out of my system,

2-wake-2-wake-2-wake-2-wake has been my sleeping norm for about 20 years now.  Pretty sure it's a stress thing in my case.  It started when I was working in the computer game industry and started pulling regular 10-hour days for weeks on end, culminating in a few weeks of 12 hour days and a single day of anything goes, following by "see you on Monday!" amounts of time off.

I tend to build up and hold in stress anyway.  Bad survival habit I picked up when I was young.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

Had my MRI today. It was an "open" MRI, if you can call a machine that looks like a waffle iron "open." With my size, I barely fit between the two halves. Breathing was problematic, but I managed to make it through the 45-or-so minute procedure with some minor resistance to each breath.

One thing that worries me is that I'm a bit sore in the area beneath (vertically below, not horizontally below) my sternum. I can't tell if it's a surface soreness or a deeper soreness. The worry comes from the fact that this is where my Greenfield IVC filter is located. It started getting sore in the last scan that they did—I swear I felt something moving in that area. Anyway, she told me that my filter is rated to withstand a magnetic field up to 3 Tesla, while her machine was only a 0.7 Tesla machine. She also said that I should go to the emergency room if anything further develops. Her opinion was that it was leftover soreness from the pressure I had when breathing.

Like I said, I'm still a tad sore in that area, so I've warned Mrs. Prof to watch me for (abnormally) strange behavior, unresponsiveness, and the like.

The followup for the MRI is slated for Friday. In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can fiddle with the CD they gave me to take to the doctor.

Speaking of doctors, my primary care doctor is obviously weaning me off of the hydrocodone. My last fill was for one every six hours. I got a new scrip today for one every eight hours. I sure as hell hope the back doctor can do something about the back pain before my primary doctor takes me completely off of it, because the Tramadol I was on wasn't doing a damned thing for my back.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

Mrs. Prof almost chased me back to my primary care doctor yesterday. I had a coughing fit that just would not let up. A couple of cough drops with dextromethorphan in them helped briefly, as did lying down and napping, but vertical time was almost like whooping cough. No doctor's appointment yet, since I'm not running a fever, but I may go in next week if it doesn't cease and desist.

No movement on the chest soreness issue. No movement is good news, as is no soreness. I guess I'm over that hurdle.

Hydrocodone is problematic at the moment. I wound up taking it at 7:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m., and 11:00 p.m. yesterday. That's every eight hours, but I don't think it's what my doctor intended. Couldn't help it, though—my left ankle and knee pain (the main sources of my Chronic Pain Syndrome) got bad enough last night that I had to do something about it.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

Yesterday, I played around with the CD that I got from the MRI place. I'm stumped. I think I was able to see a left side compression fracture, but I couldn't tell my L1 vertebra from any of the rest. Forget about trying to see pinched nerves on my right side—I just know that the pain is still there, despite the 200mg Topamax daily.

Coughing has only slightly let up. I'd get cough syrup, but I'm pretty damned certain that anything on CVS's shelves would have alcohol in it, and that's a no-no with hydrocodone and Topamax.

Follow-up meeting with the spine doctor is tomorrow  Friday morning. Wish me luck.

Edited March 16, 2017 by ProfessorTomoe
Inability to tell which day of the week it is

[mlooney 3,417]

5 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Yesterday, I played around with the CD that I got from the MRI place. I'm stumped. I think I was able to see a left side compression fracture, but I couldn't tell my L1 vertebra from any of the rest. Forget about trying to see pinched nerves on my right side—I just know that the pain is still there, despite the 200mg Topamax daily.

Coughing has only slightly let up. I'd get cough syrup, but I'm pretty damned certain that anything on CVS's shelves would have alcohol in it, and that's a no-no with hydrocodone and Topamax.

Follow-up meeting with the spine doctor is tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

 

Good luck.  Really dude you are getting the short end of the body problems stick.  Hope they can fix some of them