Psychiatry Tales or I don't want to go back on Cymbalta!

I’m sitting in my psychiatrist’s office in an overstuffed beige wing chair. It reminds me of Archie Bunker’s chair. My mother is near me sitting on an overstuffed red pattern that reminds me of William Morris. I wish my mother wasn’t here. This is the downsize of my bout in November with shut kidneys and bladder- she is treating me like I am 16. It’s getting on every last nerve I have, and like a teenager, I want to rebel. Smoke or drink, or do something to irritate her. 

My mother is talking to my doctor; I cannot get a word in edgewise. Something about me sleeping the day away. I try to tell her it’s from the kidney/bladder medicine, but she isn’t buying it. Not now. I’m lazy. 

She’s talking pills. The only pill she recalls me taking is Cymbalta, and she wants the doc to put me on that. I get upset. I don’t want to go on that drug. I was on it three years ago and the side effects after the first 2 months were horrible. It's because of Cymbalta I developed agoraphobia, not to mention a dozen other side effects like severe bloating, confusion, twitching in my arms and face, impossible to read a book, constantly thirsty, itching, a feeling like bugs were crawling over me (I had that one with Prozac too), and the worst, when I went off cold turkey on the doctors suggestion, I had brain zaps for the first time in my life.

The doctor says she will look into it, call my kidney doctor and get back to my mother. Mom is adamant I need to be on something. I’m depressed. 

“I’m not depressed mom, I am sad, in pain and frustrated”, I tell her. My father doesn’t want me to be on any meds. But my father is going downhill. My mother is calling all the shots now in their marriage. In any marriage there is always a dominate partner, even if it’s 50/50 it’s always 51/49. 

My mother looks at my psychiatrist. “She needs to be medicated. She needs to get out of the apartment more.”

I look at my psychiatrist. She’s the most petite woman I have ever seen, doll like at 4 8”, and exotic since she was not born in the States, but in India. As a person, she’s nice, she even gave me a recipe for a vegetarian korma. 

I will give her props. She asked me a month or so earlier to give her a list of every med I have ever been on. She called the kidney doctor to check which one(s) I should be on. And she knows I do not want to go back on any psych meds, and respects me for that. 

Only now it’s my mother telling her, begging her to put me on something. Begging for a script for Cymbalta. Not understanding why I cannot be on an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer. 

The doctor does her best to explain I do not need to be on both, and right now, it’s all about the kidneys. My mother goes back on her tirade all I am doing is sleeping and crying. 

Yes, I am sleeping too much, but I found if I miss a dose of the kidney/bladder pills I sleep 10 hours a day opposed to 18. I cry because my gynecologist is saying I am perimenopausal and anything and everything turns on the waterworks. I wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat like I am bringing off a fever, and find for some reason it’s easier to sleep during the day than the night, even with a fan blowing directly on me. 

I’ve been on psych meds for about 5/8 ths of my life. I’ve been off them now since November, and I am noticing some things happening to my body, all-amazing. Physically, my body is a wreck. But my brain, the brain that had the photographic memory, the brain that could read a poem once and have it committed to memory, who never forgot a book from the first one I ever read “Pat the Bunny”, to the last one I read, “The Noonday Demon”, when I had ECT. I am watching “Jeopardy” at night and actually can get more questions correct. 

There seems to be two camps both on line and in real life. Those who are pro meds and anti meds. Let me state this here and there. I don’t know where I am. I don’t think, any of the psych meds I have ever taken have helped me, and two came close to killing me, one actually had me flat line. Personally, I don’t think they did anything for me, but I stayed on them all these years because of the propaganda; doctors telling me it was like diabetes, I needed these drugs to stay alive. Playing Monday morning quarterback, I don’t they did anything for me. I might have felt good for a very slight time when they started working, but after a couple of months, they always made me feel worse. I was always told to cut the drugs cold turkey and start another one. I was a good girl, I took the drugs, blindly like a sheeple. My parents believed I should be on these drugs, and I wanted to be a dutiful daughter. And I believed the PR, the promises, because all I wanted was to be the person I was when I was first diagnosed. 

That person is gone. “She’s dead and gone lady, she’s dead and gone”- but unlike Ophelia I don’t think I am mad. I pray I do not succumb to suicide like she did. Gosh knows I’ve been in her shoes. But I am older and wiser. And I know the only Dane to die for is a Danish. (Preferably Apple Cinnamon). I want to rebuild my life again. True, the dreams I had at 22 are gone, but maybe I can make new dreams, and have a good life for how ever long I stay on this big blue ball called Earth. 

ETA: Here is the video I posted a few years ago on Cymbalta and the side effects. I will be showing it to my psychiatrist on why I hate Cymbalta. It’s a keeper. 

Rerun-This Time It's Different-A New Hollowness In My Soul

(This is a repeat. I am currently the same med cocktail, only on Abilify for Cymbalta. I am also just getting out of this depression fugue).

She sits in front of me in a big overstuffed black leather chair, black patent pumps swaying softly while she crosses and uncrosses her legs as a nervous tick.

She is made up and looks like she just stepped out of Vogue for working women. I, on the other hand, look like an unmade bed. It's been a week since my hair was washed, and that long since I showered. I did brush my teeth and floss before I got there, and brushed my long blonde hair, tying it up in a scrunchie. My jeans are clean, but the shirt I threw on, a black turtle from LL Bean, has a white mark from deodorant, and should have gone straight in the laundry pile. No make up , not even a trace of lip gloss. My shoes are brand new and hurt, brownish tan clogs from my parents for Christmas to replace the blue ones the cat destroyed a few months earlier.

We are discussing my current med cocktail. The fact that it appears that my thyroid has shut down or is shutting down because I am constantly tired and sleeping close to 16 hours a day. I cannot eat but am drinking copious amounts of water. I crave sugar. The Dunkin Donuts across the street is singing a Siren Song to me.

Lithium is being raised to 3100 mg, Cymbalta is staying the same at 60 mg. If the lithium doesn't start working soon, I will be weaned off it and go on Lamictal. All I know is it took every ounce of effort to get there this afternoon, to get dressed, brush my teeth and drive the two miles to the therapist's office. Climb the 15 stairs to get to her room in the building. I am winded like I was in my childhood when I had asthma.

All I know is I am in crisis. My brain knows this. My mind and my soul know this. Life hurts and every breath I take makes me feel like a medieval torture devise of being crushed or weighted to death in the Tower or some other gloomy place. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. But surprisingly, I am not suicidal. I just don't care- I just want to go to sleep and wake up as worm bait.

Raising the lithium, with the Cymbalta, now- it's not passive anymore. it's active. But not active like it was when I was on Remeron and got so suicidal I knew to get to the hospital pronto. It's different this time, but isn't every depression slightly different, like identical twins are never really totally identical?

I find it more violent, the ways I want to go out would give Stephen King a new novel and a literary hard on. It would make Jeffrey Dahmer a new recipe for madness. No OD'ing on pills and slipping gently into that good night. These are painful, horrible, dreamscapes and nightmares from a fevered mind sparked from neurons and gray cells not reacting or over reacting to chemical number 3 on the Periodic Table.

I hover between periods of sanity and insanity- wondering to go into the hospital and make arrangements for the striped baby girl, or just going to Home Depot, buying a few items, and going out one night in the parking lot when everyone is home and asleep and ending it all, the last moment of consciousness dialing 911 and telling the cops to seal off the parking lot.

Right now I can hover. I am scared I might slip. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but hopefully not soon.

A Tireless Campaigner And A Very Good Book

The British may be known for "inventing" the first novel, and like the first novel, this reads smoothly, part epistolary, part fiction. But it's not fiction. This is a true story, which I sorely wish was fiction.

The book I am referring to, is The Evidence Is Clear", written by Bob Fiddaman. Right now it's available as an ebook, for download here, but will be coming out in print later this year. Seroxat, (or Paxil, or Paroxetine) is manufactured worldwide by GlaxoSmithKline and is a SSRI drug used mostly for psychiatric purposes.

It was prescribed to Bob for depression, as he tells his tale of three years on this drug:

I was prescribed Seroxat by my GP due to 'depression' - it was work-related and kind of spiralled when my former employers put me on to a 'Long Term Absence Register' because I had developed an illness, Osteoarthritis of the hips, [1] that didn't allow me to perform the job I was employed for. The 'Long Term Absence Register' was basically set up to leave employees without pay and without being able to claim for benefits. It had a strain on family life and Seroxat was deemed to 'fix' that problem.

Seroxat took away the pain of not being able to provide for my family, in fact I didn't really care much about anything. I became devoid of any human emotion other than sadness. It was an unexplainable sadness though, you know, bouts of crying when I really didn't know what I was crying about. (p.10)

Bob's life spirals out of control when he starts missing a dose on holiday, and then describes side effects he encountered from taking the drug, unable to tolerate loud noises, night thrashes/terrors, night sweats, blurred vision, apathy and confusion. Then a suicide attempt. His marriage crumbles, and he has "brain zaps". After 18 months of tapering, he goes "cold turkey" off the drug and it takes about three months before he feels "normal" again after a period of hell withdrawing.

What then starts is a labyrinthian journey, as Bob goes through the bureaucracy of red tape and politics that exist in the UK, as he writes to doctors, politicians, the BBC, and employees of GSK trying to learn more about Seroxat and it's purpose. Again, it almost seems like fiction, but it's true. During this process, Bob launched his website. "Seroxat Sufferers, Stand Up And Be Counted"and has developed a loyal readership of people who have been hurt and maimed on Seroxat, as well as other psychiatric drugs.

What makes this book believable is even though someone like me who had no problems on Paxil on it, or off it, I still could relate to because of the problems I had with Cymbalta for example, or Haldol. The symptoms he went through were so similar to what I experienced on Cymbalta and Haldol and the dead ends I encountered trying to learn more about these drugs. But unlike me, Fiddy kept on truckin, as they use to say- not afraid of the red tape he was encountering and fearlessly became an advocate by default as he puts up piece after piece on his website.

150 years ago Charles Dickens told the world about workhouses and poverty in London and laws were enacted to changed it. 110 years ago Jack London was sickened by the poverty he saw first hand in London's Whitechapel district. 100 years ago Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle' to describe the horrors going on in the US meat packing industry, and 80 years later, this movement went into the fast food restaurants exposing them. Now in this new century, maybe it's time to take the lid of Big Pharma, to tell them, while they do do good manufacturing drugs like penicillin, and other drugs to bring down fever and colds, we really, really have to look how psychiatric drugs are made and marketed, and if they really do any good, compared to, say a placebo.

Bob's book is a tough read on a serious subject. But rewarding. Its only drawback is it's an ebook, you cannot hold it, or download it to a Kindle. But like any book worth reading, it makes you think. It makes you mad as hell, too. And it makes you want to go out and do something, even if it's writing a letter to your local Congressman, on MP. And for that, it really does belong on the bookshelf, once the paperback comes out. But, if you were like me and cannot wait, get the ebook in the meantime.

Here is a video Bob did to preview the book.

Headache back, plus book rejected

I woke up this morning about six am. The cat was crying for her nom-nom's. I fed her, watered her, cleaned out her box. I scritched her behind her ears, rubbed her backbone down to the tail, and gave her a kiss on top of her head. Then i took some ice tea out of the fridge and took my morning medicine. 600 mg of lithium, and 60 mg of Cymbalta. I took the glass of ice tea over to the computer, read a few emails, replied, and read a blog which made me cry, and responded to that. By that time, the meds were kicking in. My head was pounding, and I could barely make it to the bathroom in time to vomit all the tea I had just drank.

i went back to bed, put a cold compress over my forehead and eyes, put the radio on softly, and fell asleep. A couple hours later I hear the doorbell ring. it's about 9: 30. Big Fed-EX truck by my door. I open up door a crack, I am still in my lavender nightgown, and sign for a package. My heart sinks. I know what it is.

It's my two manuscripts I sent to the boyfriend/fiance of a relative who works for a major magazine. i wanted to get an honest opinion. Are they sell=able.

The note was kind, considering the circumstances. The first book, about a bipolar woman, was good and almost publishable, but people aren't interested in reading that type of book right now, with the book market in shambles.

The other one on Jack The Ripper was excellent, but very dark, and extremely graphic. You might want to lighten it up. (I m sorry, but the murder of Mary Kelly is GROSS).


Ok. Try again. Or maybe, i can re write the first book, the bipolar one, and make her a Vampire. Hell, all the Twilight fans would buy it!


For a blue Saturday, i leave you with a funny picture my Godmother emailed me yesterday. Enjoy!


How you know you are taking the Swine Flu too seriously....

For my doggie lover friends

I have a reader who thinks I am probably a crazy cat lady. I probably am....But I know I have friends who have or are dog people. I even know I have three dogs who read me- Koda, and Mary's two pups.

And I know my last entry was raw and painful to read. To end the day on a positive note, I bring you puppies.




Woof! Enjoy!

And for those like me who hate Cymbalta but love dogs, here is one brilliant dog and what he thinks of Cymbalta. Strange the dog doesn't howl at Wal-Mart.

Psychosis- private rant

hello. don't know who to talk to. Seems I am going through psychosis again- 2 years ago I heard voices and kept my ipod on 24.7 to listen to books instead of the voices.


Couldn't take a shower because I thought cyanide was in it

Now, the l.last few days- I am ready to put the tin foil up once again on the windows. I cannot eat, I am afraid to leave the flat. I am afraid to change my clothes. I am afraid to brush teeth, wash hair. I am manic, grabbing 10 minutes of sleep here and there. Last night took 5 klonepin in the hopes it would make me sleep.



My brain is turning and twisting to mush. My head hurts, I take a Tylenol for the pain. I have suicidal ideation, I close my eyes, i see myself with my throat cut, my wrists slashed, hanging from a tree, decapitated. I see myself lying in bed dead, Holly picking my bones for meat.

It's the Cymbalta - I know it's not real. But I cannot leave my apt, and i would give anything for an ice cream cone. It's so hot.

What do I do? I tell the doc it's thorazine, clozepin, and hospital. No hospital. Never again unless my appendix bursts. Even if I find out I have cancer, no hospital. No ECT, nothing, nothing, I cannot tell my parents they will declare me non composis mentos, I don't want that route. ....

I am scared .l just want to feel better again.

Midnight Manic Ramblings

It's been awhile since I discussed my med cocktail. I have successfully gone from 3,000 mg of lithium daily down to 600. Now is the time to wean off Cymbalta.

Cymbalta has been a real pain for me, med wise. I realize it works for some, but it's not working for me. So now I am weaning- and have become manic and suicidal at the same time. I feel like my skin is literally crawling with creepy crawlies, I feel like my heart is pounding out of my chest. And I close my eyes to get some relief- I see myself floating in the bath tub, water a bright crimson red. Or, I see myself hanging from the tree outside my kitchen window- the birds who live there, in a Hitchcockian fashion, pecking out my eyes.


I posted this video once before. I love the gorgeous imagery , I love the song, and yes, it, for me seems 100 percent accurate. I pray that no one else feels this way from this drug. I pray no one else ever feels like I do. Walking on a tightrope, like one of the Wallendas, between the Twin Towers- and about to fall, so close to fall- so close to flying.




Today running my errands, I went past the cemetary. They were digging a grave. I don't want to go in the ground waiting for the worms. I am and have been scared of worms all my life.

I cannot fly. I am afraid of heights. I have to learn how not to be afraid. If I don't, my life will run out. I am scared beyond anything it will be sooner than later. I want to fly. I want to soar beyond the heavens, past the stars, to peace.


I want to fly
I want to fly
I want to fly

Oh God please, let me fly

water.... i need water....

Still here.

Lithium went from 3000 mg, to 2700 mg. This month it went from 2700 to 1200.


I am fine but sleeping 16 hours a day, and drinking water. i dream of water.....

Cymbalta is still 60 mg.

For some reason I am ravenous.


I have been writing, but the last 3 days I was manic, and I cannot show people my manic writing. Else I wind up in the hospital.



Back to sleep now. Take care

More Cymbalta Hell

Reader Advisory- The letter quoted in here was written in December, when I was not safe. I am safe now. Please do not read triggered by suicidal ideation

Gianna Kali has a post today on Cymbalta. And it addresses why people on Cymbalta want to kill themselves.

I understand why. For a time this past December, I too was experiencing suicidiation like I never experienced before. All from this drug.

The following below is an email I sent to a very good friend in real life in the throws of what I thought was madness and suicidal anguish like I have never experienced before. Please do not read if you are easily triggered.

December 17, 2008
Dear Uncle -

Mommy thinks she be going mad. She woke up after 2 hours sleep, once again covered in sweat, and crying and shaking. She said she hears voices, and goes to litter box.

She takes two Tylenol for her cramps, and a glass of milk. Makes it chocolate. Sits down in kitchen and lights a fag. (She just tells me now I cannot say that word it's bad word for kitties like me to use).

She says cigarette calms her and make voices go buh-bye. She is kind not to blow smoke up my little pink nose. She cries and puts cig down in dish and says when did i get so fucking old Holly?

I look at her quixotically and she just says, look at the white hair coming in.

I give her the same look, paw her and meow. She sighs, picks up cig and inhales deeply, tears streaming down her cheeks. She looks at me and says "Holly i wanna chop off my head".

I jump on her lap and give her the merrooooww that means pet me, stroke me behind the ears. She continues, putting cig down and stroking me. "Holly I am going to Home Depot tomorrow and making a guillotine so I can chop off my head".

"The voices are telling me to chop off my head, Holly. I just dreamed I was dead, the same way King Edward II died. Only they didn't shove it up my ass, they shoved it up my female parts".

Meooow. More purrs.

"It's just as well, Holly. I got a dried up Crone, I feel like I am an old woman, I don't have a flat stomach, my boobs aren't perky anymore, no one would want me I even have stretch marks and I never had a baby".

I roll over on my back, tummy up in the air so she can see my tummy not flat either. Both of us aren't 17.

She looks at me and says "I had a perfect hourglass figure until I was 25 and the meds really fucked me up".

I don't know what to say. I blink.

"Holly, I don't want to be here. i really think I am going mad. If I tell my mom and dad I am put in a home.I cannot get power of attny back, Holly just want to die, not by pills but head cut off, or pour gas and light. Something that will hurt like hell but will work. I cannot take this anymore. I just cannot work up the courage right now, so i am safe."

She cries some more, but no tears come out. Just snot rockets, which she wipes on her sleeve like a child. This isn't like mommy. She would never do such an etiquette faux pax. She lights another cig and her hands shake. She cannot get the match to light, she goes through five or six before she has success. It lights and she takes a long drag. I let her shut her eyes and think.

Holly, I don't want to go mad. She finishes her milk, and just stares into space while the cigarette burns by her. I know she has been struggling with burning thoughts the last few weeks, and has been successful in fighting them. Now is hard. She will get better because she does not want to go mad, she does not want to go on Clozeril.

She talks looking at the window, not to me, but to something I cannot see. My predecessor's ghost maybe?

When I was sick earlier this year in Princeton hospital with pneumonia, they thought I might die-and one night when my parents were leaving my bedside, I was half conscious doped up on pain meds, my mom leaned over, adjusted the blanket, and kissed my cheek. My father kissed my cheek. My mother put a stuffed animal that was in the window in bed with me. For one brief second I felt warm and safe, like I was a little girl, and my parents would tuck me in and kiss me good night and kiss my dolly good night too.

I want to feel warm and safe and secure like that again.

She extinguishes the cigarette, goes into the bathroom, her hands shaking as she tries to brush her teeth, and washes her face. Brushes her hair and puts it back up in a pony tail. I rub by her feet, her ankles.

"I feel better now Holly. The cigarettes helped the voices, and I feel better now I washed my face. I am safe little one." She picks me up, rubs her face in my fur, scritches me behind the ears, on my back, on my head.
Carries me to the bed, plops me down on it and goes into it, after moving the pillows around. Good night my sweet baby. she says.

I hope she can sleep a bit now and no more bad dreams and voices. I wanna dream of birdies and baby mice and warm beds and fireplaces. Good cat stuff.

We love you and mom wants you, if you see this, to keep it so one day if you ever get your book written, and mom has gone mad you have something written by someone in the throws of madness.

Depression Hurts, Cymbalta Hurts More

This is, with the exception of Haldol, the worst drug i have ever been on.



An explanation of what Cymbalta is



This is how I feel and most of the side effects I am feeling. Please note, the doctor does not discuss these, nor does Eli Lilly, the manufacturer.

Thanks to Gianna Kali from Beyond Meds for helping me post these videos. You rock Gianna.

ETA: I just got an email from D. Bunker, the webmastere of Psychiatry, It's a Killing, and he just blogged about Cymbalta today too. It's worth looking at.

This Time it's Different-A New Hollowness in my Soul

She sits in front of me in a big overstuffed black leather chair, black patent pumps swaying softly while she crosses and uncrosses her legs as a nervous tick.

She is made up and looks like she just stepped out of Vogue for working women. I, on the other hand, look like an unmade bed. It's been a week since my hair was washed, and that long since I showered. I did brush my teeth and floss before I got there, and brushed my long blonde hair, tying it up in a scrunchie. My jeans are clean, but the shirt I threw on, a black turtle from LL Bean, has a white mark from deodorant, and should have gone straight in the laundry pile. No make up , not even a trace of lip gloss. My shoes are brand new and hurt, brownish tan clogs from my parents for Christmas to replace the blue ones the cat destroyed a few months earlier.

We are discussing my current med cocktail. The fact that it appears that my thyroid has shut down or is shutting down because I am constantly tired and sleeping close to 16 hours a day. I cannot eat but am drinking copious amounts of water. I crave sugar. The Dunkin Donuts across the street is singing a Siren Song to me.

Lithium is being raised to 3100 mg, Cymbalta is staying the same at 60 mg. If the lithium doesn't start working soon, I will be weaned off it and go on Lamictal. All I know is it took every ounce of effort to get there this afternoon, to get dressed, brush my teeth and drive the two miles to the therapist's office. Climb the 15 stairs to get to her room in the building. I am winded like I was in my childhood when I had asthma.

All I know is I am in crisis. My brain knows this. My mind and my soul know this. Life hurts and every breath I take makes me feel like a medieval torture devise of being crushed or weighted to death in the Tower or some other gloomy place. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. But surprisingly, I am not suicidal. I just don't care- I just want to go to sleep and wake up as worm bait.

Raising the lithium, with the Cymbalta, now- it's not passive anymore. it's active. But not active like it was when I was on Remeron and got so suicidal I knew to get to the hospital pronto. It's different this time, but isn't every depression slightly different, like identical twins are never really totally identical?

I find it more violent, the ways I want to go out would give Stephen King a new novel and a literary hard on. It would make Jeffrey Dahmer a new recipe for madness. No OD'ing on pills and slipping gently into that good night. These are painful, horrible, dreamscapes and nightmares from a fevered mind sparked from neurons and gray cells not reacting or over reacting to chemical number 3 on the Periodic Table.

I hover between periods of sanity and insanity- wondering to go into the hospital and make arrangements for the striped baby girl, or just going to Home Depot, buying a few items, and going out one night in the parking lot when everyone is home and asleep and ending it all, the last moment of consciousness dialing 911 and telling the cops to seal off the parking lot.

Right now I can hover. I am scared I might slip. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but hopefully not soon.

Huge Med change today

My meds are changing today. Cymbalta- stays at 60 mg. Lithium is going from 2600 to 3100. I'm clutching at straws trying to get out of this horrible darkness, it's not only Churchill's black dog this time, it's more like Cerberus.

As Bette Davis said in "All About Eve"- "Fasten your seatbelts= It's going to be a bumpy ride".

If I can post later I will,If not back tomorrow.

In the mean time, if anyone knows about Lithium Orotate, please contact me.

Migraine-quick post

For the 4th time this week I have woken up with a migraine. The weird thing is I usually get up between 3-4 am when the cat makes her nocturnal rounds, and walks across my full bladder.

I am fine then, I empty said bladder play with cat for a few minutes, and then go back to bed, shutting the bedroom door this time. I am fine. I go to sleep, lulled by the sound of the fan. It snowed last night, and I still had the fan going on and the heat at 65 degrees. Woke up covered in sweat.

I looked up side-effects for Cymbalta last night when my head was clearer. Migraines, common. Weight loss- common. Yeah, I am on one meal a day, I have no appetite. It says don't prescribe with lithium Sheeze. My lithium in the last 6 weeks has gone from 600 mg to 2800. Do doctors read this shit? This information is even on Wikipedia! and here.(SNRI's)

I am convinced the only med to make me better besides chocolate- is an animal. Here is a lovely video of a cat and a dog- who have unusual talents. They scuba dive,

Enjoy. Happy Sundae everyone.

Huge med change today

Went to the doc today, blood work indicated lithium still wasn't even near therapeutic level, so it's now at 2800. It was at 3100 in March when I got sick. Cymbalta stayed same at 60 ,I was hoping to start tapering down to 40. And Klonepin is now daily at 10 mg.


I feel like a zombie, with the bucket next to me. And my hands are shaking I cannot hold a cuppa tea. I wouldn't mind a cute single guy come over and make me some soup though.


Anyway, will write tomorrow. Just taking a day off to be a couch potato tonight.

Back soon.

I have been having problems with my current anti-depressant Cymbalta most of the week. If it isn't diarrhea, it is copious amounts of vomiting. If it isn't that, it's brain zaps. Today it's migraines and brain zaps.


I am finding my family doesn't seem to understand how sick I really am. Believe me, the leaves are just starting to turn, and it's my favorite time of the year. I have so many things I want to do. But on a bad day I can get out of bed, change the cat's water and then feed her, and clean her litter box. Take some ice water, and my meds. Then go back to bed, with the shakes, and the bucket.

On a good day, it's the same thing, but I can check the news on several US and British websites, and a few bloggers I love to read. Maybe comment before my head is back in the bucket, and I am back in bed again.

I haven't seen my parents since Yom Kippur, and my mother is hurt. I don't blame her. Yesterday she told me that she saw her mother in Brooklyn more than I am seeing her. Brooklyn was about 50 miles away. My parents are 2 miles away.



I cannot help but wonder, especially since it is October, and every where I look I see pink ribbons, that if I had cancer, they would understand why I feel sick now most of the time. But when I tell people I feel sick from a med, I am told "It's all in my head", and "Get over it".

Maybe that's why I don't go into a lot of detail about the problems I have had with a lot of the meds I have been on, either now or in the past.


I don't want sympathy. It's a fact of life. I don't want to be a victim either. I just want to be able to live with the least amount of side effects and be able to do the things I use to be able to do.


I have been jotting down ideas on a pad next to my bed, and a microcasstte recorder, and hope in the next few days I can be able to sit long enough to write something coherent and post it. Or I will have a few really good days without brain zaps, migraines, and other side effects. Maybe it's just a bad week. i hope next week i don't have anything other than some mild discomfort from this.

From a personal letter

You once told me you don't feel like you don't exist.

I feel that way right now, for the last couple of days. You don't SI do you?

I've wanted to throw myself against the wall, do something to feel something so I know I exist. I lie in bed for days and cannot stop crying, and the cat shares the bed with me. I can hear her heart beat, and her purr, and I know she exists, but I don't think I do, even though I must on some level to hear her purr and her heart beat.


I hope this feeling lifts soon. Sick as a dog from Cymbalta......migraines, brain zaps... the runs,


I just wish to be normal, even for a moment.

Take care,

Susan

Cymbalta cold turkey

Has anyone out there in the blogosphere gone through withdrawal?

I need help, and- I need help, dammit. I am not suicidal. The side effects here are driving me to distraction.

To top everything off, my .mac account seems to have been frozen. Apparently they are switching to something called Mobile Me. I cannot get anyone in Appleland to answer the phone.

So- if you know me in real life, (and I think only 3 people who read this do), write to my Earthlink or Gmail accounts. Or call.

I would give my right arm for a phone call.

But right now I am off to the gym. I don't know what else to do with all this energy.

Cut off from Cymbalta, cold turkey

It's now entering the fourth night since I have slept. Weatherman says it will be another 2 days of this oppressive heat. 4 days running and four hours total.

I took a Klonepin about noon, after I got back from the gym. I was so tired but couldn't sleep. I had done 10 miles on the treadmill, 20 miles on the bike and climbed over 10,000 steps on the stair climber. Came home, showered, popped a Klonepin and fell asleep shortly thereafter.

Woke up 40 minutes later, The grass outside the apartment was being mowed and the noise was deafining. No use. I couldn't go back to sleep, and I was covered head to toe in sweat. Another shower, remade the bed with clean sheets. And changed clothes again, and went back to the gym. I couldn't sit still.

The p-doc called at 9am and told me to quit Cymbalta immediately. She thought maybe the Cymbalta was making me manic. I don't know. I said I was on 60 mg of Cymbalta, shouldn't we taper it down to 40 and then 20 and go slow?

No, she said, immediately stop.

So now it's the start of day four without sleep, approx 4 hours and ten minutes of sleep in the last four days. I can only blame the East Coast heat wave so much for my trouble. The other symptoms, well , I don't know if the exess sweating is from sitting here in an apartment who's thermostat is over 90 degrees, or it's from the Cymbalta. My skin feels like it's moulting. I feel like I am made of light and pure energy. This must be how a Superhero feels.

And yet I know I cannot read. I cannot listen to music because my brain is going to fast to absorb it. I am writing quicker than I can type and I type 60 wpm. I;m rapid cycling and mixed states at the same time.

And to top everything off, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I get a visit from Auntie Flo.

After everything I have been through in the last few months, it's enough to make me wonder if I am the reincarnation of Job.


Time to take another pill, hopefully sleep will come, and the mania will cease.