Or not...
The following has been written over the last five days, here and there. I'm keeping it for myself, with very little editing, as a document of several days with extreme TN episodes plus medical side effects. It is time to take seriously the medical suggestions that I might be a candidate for the relatively new use of Botox as a TN treatment. This business of increasing medications to near-toxic levels has been unsettling. I'm taking a short breather from the run-up, which I can afford because it's at a level which appears to offer some relief. I have a few days in which I can do this and find out about the Botox. Then I may have to see what the final level brings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was rash enough to call Sunday' episode a culmination. It wasn't. Monday through Tuesday beat it all hollow. In 36 hours I ate successfully once, through a combination of TN and the struggle to run up the meds. When my PCP suggested that step, I hesitantly agreed. I forgot that when I had done the run-up before, it was one drug at at time.
What's been going on is a combination of every side effect in the litany for each anti-convulsant, along with breakthrough pain at at very high level: high as in I stopped counting. This is the stuff of which suicide is made. Had the whole business not subsided yesterday mid-morning, I'm truly not sure what I would have done. There are limits to endurance.
Stopping the run-up isn't an option, really. I could call it quits where I am and see if that's enough, but going backwards is only slightly less amusing. As I mentioned, quitting the meds entirely is a potential method of suicide, but nothing else. If what's been going on is a sample of what sudden change of meds can bring, I'd rather throw myself under a bus. In addition, the dosages mean that I can go on at intermediate levels only so long. I have just enough of lower doses to enable the transition (from my old scrips). Since pharmacists today are anal about filling two different dosages of the same scrip, it's push ahead a little more or go back where we started, with nothing to show for all that crap. Gotta go ahead.
This does creep out the spousal unit. Evidently I've been tossing and moaning enough to call attention to myself. Not good. At the low point Tuesday evening, I just solved the pain problem by gulping a handful of Clonazepam. If you're wondering what happens then, you wake up six hours later with several kinds of headache, persistent nausea and an inability to sleep. And so on.
Things did get back to normal by Wednesday night, and have remained no more than an average level of pain a couple of times a day. As I mentioned a few days back, that hardly counts anymore.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was rash enough to call Sunday' episode a culmination. It wasn't. Monday through Tuesday beat it all hollow. In 36 hours I ate successfully once, through a combination of TN and the struggle to run up the meds. When my PCP suggested that step, I hesitantly agreed. I forgot that when I had done the run-up before, it was one drug at at time.
What's been going on is a combination of every side effect in the litany for each anti-convulsant, along with breakthrough pain at at very high level: high as in I stopped counting. This is the stuff of which suicide is made. Had the whole business not subsided yesterday mid-morning, I'm truly not sure what I would have done. There are limits to endurance.
Stopping the run-up isn't an option, really. I could call it quits where I am and see if that's enough, but going backwards is only slightly less amusing. As I mentioned, quitting the meds entirely is a potential method of suicide, but nothing else. If what's been going on is a sample of what sudden change of meds can bring, I'd rather throw myself under a bus. In addition, the dosages mean that I can go on at intermediate levels only so long. I have just enough of lower doses to enable the transition (from my old scrips). Since pharmacists today are anal about filling two different dosages of the same scrip, it's push ahead a little more or go back where we started, with nothing to show for all that crap. Gotta go ahead.
This does creep out the spousal unit. Evidently I've been tossing and moaning enough to call attention to myself. Not good. At the low point Tuesday evening, I just solved the pain problem by gulping a handful of Clonazepam. If you're wondering what happens then, you wake up six hours later with several kinds of headache, persistent nausea and an inability to sleep. And so on.
Things did get back to normal by Wednesday night, and have remained no more than an average level of pain a couple of times a day. As I mentioned a few days back, that hardly counts anymore.
posted by Uncle | 20:36
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home