OT: A bit blue

Are these side effects the type that fade once the body adjusts, or are they permanent? If they are going to fade and settle down, it will be worth persevering. If not, you need to go back to your doctor and discuss these effects with him or her. If you can put up with the depression and the water retention better than the pain, that is also something to keep in mind.

Not surprising. Hang in there and vent all you like.

Lord, we wouldn't ever do that. You're far to valuable!

Wow! Splendid little things! :D Really cheerful. Thank you. I need cheerful today.

Hi Sunny,

And here I thought I was going to find a risque (blue material) joke...

Sounds like you could use a chuckle anyway. It's not exactly a joke (or maybe it is) but I came across this bit of geographical trivia by accident this morning - can't resist passing it along. My only quandry was/is whether to post it here or in the "Spew Warning" thread (HINT). Maybe I'll do both...

About you meds - try to keep reminding yourself: upside vs. downside, (potential) benefits vs. side effects, depression vs. pain (Wha? That's a CHOICE???) Well... maybe not that last one, but I think you know the drill. Also, you'll only be on it for a definite length of time, taper off, and it will be over, one way or the other. I'm on a med )indefinitely) that has a side effect of giving me edema in my feet & legs (and now I've developed neuropathy; no idea if it's related to the med or not), so to counter the edema, instead of changing meds, they prescribe *another* one - a diuretic with it's own sides!

Hang in there - write if you want/need - support is here. If it helps, read my opus on coping with it all again.

If this bunch booted folks for whining, [REDACTED] woulda been outta here *long* ago...

Doc Oh, the pa> The new pill that I was prescribed by the pain specialist is one that

You know how the 3 and 4 year-old little folks have No edit button? They just blurt out everything that comes to their little minds. A friend of mine was prescribed one of those drugs that makes you retain fluid and eat everything you can get in your mouth. She has snowy white hair and had become quite puffy. A little girl discovered my friend Christmas shopping in the toy department. With a voice that carried throughout the store, she shrieked, " Look Mama! Here's Mrs. Santa Claus." Just a warning, dear Sunny. We'll hope your fluid retention is done with by December. If not, be prepared to sign autographs. Polly

Sunny,

I've been on all sorts of meds since last year and I can relate. It seems that sometimes the 'treatment' has more nasty side-effects than the reason for the treatment; It's very frustrating.

Hopefully the depression and fluid retention is temporary until your body adjusts to the medication. I encourage you to talk to your doctor because if they're temporary, it's worth it.

-Irene

There's also "guinea pig syndrome" - when a patient gets bounced around from dr. to dr., test to test, prescription to prescription, therapy to therapy, with no good answers or results - possibly for years. Eventually the patient begins to feel hopelessness; that medicine and doctors know nothing, and are just experimenting on the patient like a guinea pig to see what happens.

One remedy for this is for doctors to finally abandon their silly god complex, and be able to admit to patients that they don't have all the answers, and there are some things they'll never be able to answer or cure.

Oh, crap - there's that soapbox again. See what happens when I get started?

Doc

I am inordinately lucky in my GP. He's Dutch, and that might make a difference... He's perfectly ready to admit something is out of his field of knowledge and send me to a specialist. It's what they are for, he says. And if a medication has more unhelpful side effects than the good it may do, he'll help to find another.

Hands Doc a megaphone... ;)

Do you know the difference between a GP (PCP) and a specialist?

A GP/PCP treats what you have. A specialist thinks you have what s/he treats.

That's another reason I *strongly* recommend *everyone* have a copy of The PDR Pocket Guide to Prescription Drugs

their home medical libraries, in addition to reading and keepingthe drug information sheets that come with prescriptions. If anyone*has* a problem with a prescribed med, they can do some homework aheadof discussing it with their doc, ask questions, check out a drug*before* they start taking it, etc....

They get paid more and their secretaries are better at losing things!

Giggle!

When he's looking for something new for me, he goes through the list of side effects and discusses the relationship of the drug to anything I have previously had that didn't work or I reacted badly to. We have a family history of reacting oddly and badly to drugs.

Latest one was Trammadol. So far it makes me feel a bit distant and detached, but at least I'm not watching the fish swim in the walls and hearing them quote Shakespeare at me slightly wrongly!

And I don't take it all the time, only when the pain REALLY bites.

Ta, I'll pop it away for next time. :)

Well, for me anyway, I was lucky. I started a medication last Setpember and went through a few months of SEVERE joint pain, especially in my hands. I'd wake up in the morning andmy hands were frozen stiff - they hurt so bad it brought tears t my eyes. Fortunately, now that pain has subsided to the point where my hands don't hurt during the day anymore and just a little in the morning...so sometimes it just is a matter of giving the medication a chance.

-Irene

I hope the benefits are starting to outweigh the side effects by now. Good luck with it. Hugs, Allison

do you mind me asking what it is? you can email if you prefer, I've tried a few things, mostly with disasterous consequences, I either never get to the full dose, or once I even landed in cardic care after taking just one pill because my blood pressure went to something crazy like, I remember the bottom number was in the 130s - my top number isn't usually that high and apparently my pupils were so dilated they barely needed a light to check my eyes! You might want to call them and ask if you should stay longer at a lower dose, when retaining fluid was a problem for me, I was told to hold it at the same dose for 2 weeks, then another

2, something to do with some side effects going away, when after a month there had been no change they gave up with that particular drug.

Cheers Anne

In college I knew some people who would've paid for something like that.

So did I! As far as I'm concerned, so long as they have the pain to go with it, as I did, that's just fine...

Codeine - no damned use to me!

Mmm, trammadol. I used to take 2 before I even tried to sit up, after having the baby. Good stuff, and I used to trade off - trammadol one day, high dosage codeine the next. Happy days. I agree with Dee, watch the alcohol consumption with that one or you'll just float away on a cloud....

-- Jo in Scotland

Anne, my new drug is Trileptal. It's another anti-seizure drug used off-label for nerve pain.

Yesterday and the day before I was having such bad problems with the drug that I cut back on the dose. Today it's even worse. I'm stopping it until I can call the pain clinic on Monday and see what they say. Right now, I would need a strong anti-emetic to keep taking it. The list of bad effects is pretty long and sounds in some ways quite comic. If The Three Stooges had these effects from a pill it would be pretty funny. Well, except for the emetic part. But I'm not Moe nor Larry nor Curly and I'm not really laughing. Although DH can make me laugh even at the worst of moments. I love him.

So I am in limbo waiting for Monday. Sorry to be so cursory in responding to other posts. My fingers are numb. Makes typing a challenge.

Hugs, Sunny