Posted by Reggie BoStar on September 12, 2009, at 21:13:54
In reply to Re: Perceptions: effexor and pristiq » Reggie BoStar, posted by Phillipa on September 9, 2009, at 19:37:54
Hi Phillipa,
I don't know what I'll do next. The short-term goal was to get the Effexor out of my system and get the Pristiq back in, so I could at least function. That process is now complete and I'm back to my old miserable self.But I can get out to walk every day while I listen to good audiobooks. I do 3+ miles every day at a good pace. It's critical that I do this no matter how I feel or what the weather is.
The weather works to my advantage because I can make the preparations for the walks into learning experiences. I'm gradually finding out exactly what I need to wear to be completely comfortable in the worst weather New Hampshire has to offer: temperatures near 0 deg F, with below 0 wind chills.
Because of the crappy weather this year I've also learned a lot about walking in the rain. A plain old-fashioned umbrella with waterproof walking sneakers beats those hooded rain jackets hands down. My glasses and headphones stay dry.
Concentrating on things like this with intensity helps a great deal. So does choosing audiobooks carefully. Any book on psychology that reminds me of the big picture - even self-help books because they make me think about it - are verboten. I listen almost exclusively to science fiction novels. That's the literature type of science fiction, not to be confused with the "Sci-Fi" crap on TV, in movies, and in comic books.
That's another area where I need to focus intently on what I'm doing. I collect old first-edition hardbound science fiction novels, and spend a lot of time cataloging them thoroughly, wrapping the jackets in protective mylar, etc.
I carry this to compulsive extremes. I must do this to keep the other things at bay. Back when the libraries were starting to dump their fancy card catalog cabinets, I bought two of them for a song. I refinished them, then used my book cataloging software to print 3 X 5 cards for all my books. I even printed separate cards for short stories in the anthologies. At that time there were about 2000 book cards and 8000 "subtitle" cards.
Since then I've doubled my collection and am seriously thinking about getting caught up with the card catalogs.
Think about a guy who has to open and close his front door 103 times before he can leave the house. Not 102 times or 104 times - 103 times exactly. If he gets it wrong or loses count, he has to start over from scratch.
Every one of the cards in the catalog is one door opening. Fortunately I was able to compromise and not start over every time I screwed up!
I learned this when I was 10 years old and was terrified in bed at night because I sincerely believed I was dying. I would keep running the same TV commercial with sound over and over again in my head. I couldn't take a break because I might start listening to my heart beat and panic.
This is how I came to use this type of thinking and acting to keep from coming completely unhinged. It isn't perfect - I needed ECT in 2005 to snap out of an overload. But it works most times.
Something like Effexor is a danger to me because it makes me feel like crap. When I feel like crap I don't have the energy to keep the brainstorming going, and so severe depression and panic starts to take over.
All of the foregoing is an explanation of why I had to get rid of Effexor as soon as possible and re-stabilize on Pristiq. Now I can at least keep pounding away at thoughts and things, like this keyboard right now.
And that is my life, and why I don't know what to do next. I see my therapist this coming week and my psychiatrist in October. I've already been in touch with the latter so I can keep the supply of free samples of Pristiq coming.
I have a backup plan, I have a backup plan. From my days on Cymbalta, I have a surplus of about 100 60mg tabs and 50 or so 30mg tabs. If my pdoc can't keep me supplied wih Pristiq until the end of the year (when the Medicare Rx prescription coverage restarts), I can go back on Cymbalta (under the pdoc's direction of course) for the rest of the year. It actually does work as well as Pristiq as far as depression and panic go. The reason I went off Cymbalta was that I was having problems with bladder retention. Gross. The sphinctors were not under my control and the default state was SHUT! I had to be cathertized twice in the ER.
However, there's a backup for the backup. From those days I also have a surplus of Flo-Max. This is the med for guys with fat prostates who also suffer from retention. My problem isn't quite the same but the Flo-Max did help with easing the retention so I didn't have to be catheterized again.
Still, even with Flo-Max it was rough on the bladder. So I went to Pristiq which doesn't cause retention, at least not for me.
More brainstorming. See how it works?
So this week there may be another change. My therapist and pdoc keep close tabs on one another. The message as before will be "I've never felt any sustained relief, not since I was 10." My therapist told me to make sure I repeated that phrase to the pdoc. This week it'll get to him again.
Who knows?
Time to catalog a new bactch of audiobooks. Later,
Reggie BoStar
poster:Reggie BoStar
thread:915804
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090912/msgs/916775.html