Showing posts with label effexor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label effexor. Show all posts

08 January, 2008

THIS TITLE ISN'T MORRISSEY-RELATED!



...though he and The Smiths are the best thing to listen to when you're down. Nothing else (and I like The Cure, too) allows you to wallow deep deep down in your own misery.

Moving on!

It seems (with crossed toes) that I may have been granted a reprieve. This happens to fibro patients -- the agony waxes and wanes. I think the more popular term is that we fibromyalgians (I prefer this term to "fibromyalgics." A fibromyalgian sounds like an alien, and to most people and most doctors we're the closest they'll get to seeing one) have flares, and I think this term is wrongly and stupidly applied to us. A flare would be an exacerbation of what is our normal, baseline pain. And we wish. The truth is that the so-called flare is the norm and the very limited relief of very limited duration --maybe a month out of a year -- is our reality.

The truth, like everything else, fucking hurts.

My reprieve happens to occur just as I'm coming off Percocet -- had my last one yesterday -- and the parents are making hay into gold on that score. Mom especially. I reminded her that it's an amazingly impossible thing for my cessation of taking pain relieving medications (I'm getting off Effexor and Mirapex too) to cause pain relief. And I've also reminded my parents that their pleas to allow me to "let the new meds work" and their reminders that the increase in Prozac and Lyrica, plus the addition of Cymbalta in about two weeks need a couple months to work are likely to have a downside:

In about six months (if I'm still in Lummox, so help me and my too-kind parents -- had to get that plug in because I have one trifle with them maybe once a month. Maybe. ...That, and they're keeping me alive) whatever the Effexor and Mirapex did for me is going to end, and they may have an entirely different animal on their hands. I've gone off my anti-anxiety meds before -- they work, ergo you're not weird, ergo you don't need meds -- and it has always been almost exactly six months before I found myself in an ER, thinking I was having a heart attack, knowing differently, but having a king-hell panic attack and in need of sedation, a referral to a doctor, and relief from the 49 percent of me that believed I really was having a heart attack.

The thing about having panic and generalized anxiety disorders? If I have an actual heart attack, I'll likely be older and more accustomed to the king-hell panic attacks I wake up with every morning. So if I wake up with a real heart attack, that should pretty well do me in. I'll just take a Klonopin and brush it off.

I hope I'm not the only one who finds that hilarious.

[Pain (the scales are back!): 7.5/10 -- It's not a big improvement, but it's still an improvement... However temporary.

Anxiety: 8/10 -- Good as gold!

Self-negating title: You read it, You can't un-read it!]

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24 December, 2007

WITHDRAWAL!



I'm detoxing for the holidays. Stepping down off Percocet 10/325s by increments of one pill every five days. Right now I'm taking four per day instead of the normal five... Well, normal was six, which barely masked my pain enough for me to walk three blocks in a day... A day that would ensure that I would be on bed rest for the following two days.

So five wasn't enough, but was all I could get from the GP I had. He dropped me because he didn't want to deal with a fibromyalgian. And he didn't want to deal with a fibromyalgian who is seeing a pain clinic that is horribly averse to writing scripts themselves. If they had their way, a GP would write all their prescriptions.

Have I made the point that the pain (no "management") clinic I'm seeing is totally fucked up?
And I know it isn't fair -- I haven't described my dealings with my GP in enough detail yet. I assure you such will follow... Perhaps when I don't want to tear my teeth out...

Anyway, the posts may have more time between them. Or maybe not. Writing -- getting things out -- can be therapeutic. In fact, I'm surprised the good people at QPC didn't prescribe it.
OH -- and sorry this is going to be an aside, basically -- I also am in the process of getting off Mirapex and Effexor and dear sweet Klonopin because all QPC will prescribe me is Lyrica. Lyrica Lyrica Lyrica by the mouthful. So how does 900mg of Lyrica stand up to Percocet 10/325s times five? It's a knockout in the first 10 seconds of round one... The winner? You're aware.

No segue -- I'm thinking about taking five Percocets a day until they run out. Why stretch out the misery? I know I'm experiencing less of it because of the (all too brief) step-down I'm doing, but am becoming convinced it would be better to go cold turkey (or turkee, if you prefer) from five. I've always preferred ripping off the Band-aid instead of trying to be gentle and taking five minutes and experiencing each individual hair being ripped out as separate events.

Will keep you, dear reader, up to date on any such decision. Until next time, I write you from Purgatory.

(My own, since the Holy Catholic Church decided there isn't one any longer...)

[Pain: from 10/10.

Anxiety: 10/10.

Self-righteousness: set to 10/10 and stuck there.]

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