Tag Archives: seroquel

Which is worse: a migraine or a boy band?

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The headache started at about 7. It felt like just another, “Hey, asshole, you need to eat something” warning. So I ignored it for a little longer, working on my client’s blog design until I finally gave in and ate. It didn’t go away.

When I picked Mike up from work at about 9:20, the headache continue to hang around. Robbie invited us over to Jaysa’s for a bit, so we decided to head over after going to Mike’s so that he could change out of his work clothes. I figured the headache would hit the road once I’d had a couple of drinks, as we were going to play a little beer pong. As soon as I walked in the door and saw my niece Ciana, though, I lost all interest in beer. I know, I know; there must be something wrong with me! But no, it’s just the part of me that absolutely adores kids and is completely addicted to very cute newborns. So while Mike played a couple games of beer pong and the rest of the gang finished off the few remaining bottles of beer, I snuggled with Ciana, talking to her about this and that, and then fed her while her mommy and daddy got to have some fun.

The headache moved into the background, and I figured it would finally fade.

After the last drop of beer was gone, the four of us — Mike, Robbie, Jaysa, and I — sat around the kitchen table and chatted while Ciana slept in her infant carseat.

The night wore on, and soon Mike decided that he wanted to go home. He also decided that he wanted a Big Mac, so we stopped at McDonald’s. As we sat in the drive-thru, my blood sugar dropped and I felt pretty crummy, so I decided I’d get some fries and a McDouble (which is the double cheeseburger). I drove back to his house carefully, very aware of the snow, the slickness of the road, and my dangerously low blood sugar. (Ever since I was a little Elizabeth, I’ve been hypoglycemic, which basically means that my metabolism is really fast and keeps me skinny, but also absorbs sugar very quickly and leaves me really sick if I don’t eat every few hours AND eat foods high in protein.)

By the time I got to Mike’s, my head was pounding, my stomach was queasy, and I pretty much sat on the floor of the kitchen while he ate, occasionally nibbling on a fry or two when the headache and nausea ebbed momentarily. It would come back quickly, and all I could do was sit on the floor with my head between my knees, my hands pressing hard on the top of my head where the headache seared, making it feel like my brain was swelling against my skull.

I could barely eat, I felt so horrible.

I forced myself to eat a little more, if only to raise my blood sugar. Then, suddenly, the headache turned into a monster migraine. Pain would flare across my brow, through my eyes, looping in a nightmare. It would cease for a second, then it would go back around the front of my head. When it paused, the headache would go back to the back and top of my head. I knew I needed to go home so I could make some soup, take a Tramadol, and take my Seroquel, but I could barely move, it hurt so bad.

I’ve never had a headache like it.

When the searing pain in the front of my head stopped, I put my boots and coat on, grabbed the rest of my fries, and got into the car, hoping that I would make it home before it came back.

By the time I got home, I felt too exhausted to make the soup. I took 50mg of Tramadol, hoping that it would kick the migraine’s ass and let me sleep, as well as the 400mg of Seroquel (Pam bumped me up to 400 to see if it would make an even bigger difference from the 300 I was taking). I put my cold eye mask on, put my regular sleeping eye mask over it, and lay flat on my back as the headache sat in front of my head.

My plan was to get up at noon and work on my client’s site so that I could have everything done and go out bowling with Mike and his coworkers.

I woke up fifteen hours later.

Dazed, groggy, and annoyed that I’d woken up so late, I stumbled around trying to clear my head enough to do at least SOME work. I figured I could cram it all into a few hours and still be able to go bowling.

WRONG.

Pam had warned me that going up to 400mg would make me drowsy. Normally, Tramadol gives me a high and allows me to sleep really, really well if I take it before bed. Apparently, combining the two is a recipe for a fifteen-hour coma (but it did make my headache go away, so I guess we’re even). Gone were my plans of going to my aunt’s to work with her for a few hours and then coming home for a shower before going out to the bowling alley.

It’s kind of a good thing, though; Mike and I do a lot of stuff together, so it’s nice to see him go out and have fun without me. I do feel a little left out, but it’s my own damn fault.

I’m not sure what the lesson is here. Both medications are okay to take together — I made sure to ask Pam about it. I think what happened was, I took both too late (at about four in the morning), and should have just gone to bed with nothing instead. Had I known that we did have some Aleve in the house, I would have just taken that.

I just know that that headache was NOT a normal headache. It was awful, beyond any words. I’ve only had one migraine before it and that wasn’t even close to how bad last night’s headache was.

I still feel it, faintly there, as if it’s just waiting to come back and torture me more. It could be worse, though:

You’re welcome.

So far, so good, oh well

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I’ve been kind of avoiding my blog lately, to be honest. I haven’t really had a lot to say. So much for blogging every day, huh?

Tonight I graduated to 200mg of Seroquel. I accidentally skipped my 150mg dose the night before last, so I’m not sure if that’s going to affect me in any way. I couldn’t call Pam to ask, and totally forgot to ask my mom, so we’ll see. I feel fine, if not a little tired and cranky at times, but that could just be normal and have nothing to do with the meds.

So far, I think the Seroquel is working. I mean, I don’t feel any different — at least, I don’t think so. But I guess that’s a good thing, since most medications affect me in weird ways. I was on Zoloft for about a year when I was a teenager, and it eventually made me completely and coldly apathetic; I wouldn’t have given a shit if my whole family died. That’s a scary feeling, let me tell you. I had to wean myself off of it — because if you just stop taking it, it could make you suicidal (go antidepressants!) — and didn’t want to try anything else. Then, not too long ago, I went on Cymbalta because my rheumatologist thought it might help with the pain and the depression. Cymbalta made me more energized than the Energizer Bunny; I was like the Energizer Bunny on CRACK. I didn’t sleep at all. After about four days, I stopped taking it.

Pam says that people with bipolar disorder don’t respond well to antidepressants; they either don’t respond at all or have weird side effects — like what I experienced. So I guess my PA-C is pretty sure I’m bipolar, which is good; I really like that she listens to me and takes into account what I think. I told my mom years ago that I thought I was bipolar, and she brushed it off. (She still doesn’t think I am, whereas most of the other people I interact with do agree that I could be bipolar. I think she’s just seen way too many extreme cases at work; she’s a psych tech in the behavioral disorder section of a hospital.)

Seroquel does do one thing, though: it makes me super tired once I take it. I have to get a good night of sleep, or else I’ll be out of it for hours the next day. Pam warned me about this, and I’m stoked to for once respond to medication the way I’m supposed to. (Remember Neurontin? After about a week of being on that stuff for my pain, I ended up high as a kite on night in Mike’s basement, not knowing where I was or who I was with. Yeah. I so want to take that again. NOT.)

I see Pam again on Friday. I hope that she was able to get some ideas out of my rheumatologist’s notes. I try really hard not to think about the fact that it might take years more to get a diagnosis. I try not to worry that between now and then, whatever it is could get even worse — devastatingly worse. So far, I’ve been lucky. I mean, it sucks to be in mind-numbing pain when the pain hits, but so far it hasn’t done any damage — that I can see, anyway. I am pretty much stuck until I do find out what it is, though.

Anyway. How are you doing?

PS: I need some feedback on a couple of sections from Secondhand Mom, so I’m thinking about posting an excerpt here. Would you be down?

PSS: Freaking Bookworm is back up!

Squirt vs Apollo

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Pam wasn’t kidding when she said the Seroquel would make me drowsy. I took it at about 12 or 1am, and by 2am I could barely hold my own head up. Today I’ve been pretty lethargic; all I want to do is, well, nothing. She said it would pass after a few days. I’m pretty sure she said it would phase out once I hit the 150mg dosage, which is about five days from now.

I just downed a cup of coffee, though, and I feel a bit more lively now.

Speaking of lively, today’s been an interesting day. Remember how I told you about my living situation? You know: my parents, great-grandmother, and Apollo the cat on the first floor, my great-aunt on the second floor with her cat Charlie, and my sister, grandparents, Squirt the cat, and I on the third floor. My grandparents and parents ended up making the switch, so now Mom, Dad, Lauren, and I live on the third floor, and Noni, Popi, and Biz Noni live on the first.

We decided that we would eventually move Apollo up here, too, but knew that it would be rough because Squirt? Is Napoleon in disguise. She weighs maybe eight pounds soaking wet, but she’s got tons of attitude to make up for how teeny she is. Apollo, on the other hand, weighs probably two or three times as much as she does, but he is a big baby. Squirt originally belonged to my ex-boyfriend, and his family didn’t treat their cats very well. I found Apollo outside a few years after my ex gave me Squirt. He was a teeny, orphaned kitten, and you could tell that he had been dumped by his original owners.

So we knew that Squirt was pretty much going to push Apollo around. We decided to move him upstairs last night, and it’s been a Mexican standoff since. Right now, we have a door with a glass window standing between them, with him prowling most of her territory. Last night and most of today, she had him cowering in a corner. Even though she is my baby, I felt really bad for him, so I moved his litter and food into the corner with him and as soon as she left the living/dining rooms, we closed the door behind her. Now he is all badass, like, “What, bitch? You can’t touch me now!” Currently he is exploring under my desk and she is sulking in the window in the pantry, I think.

Squirt has always been my buddy, but I couldn’t stand seeing Apollo hiding under a table, not coming out to eat or drink; if he so much as raised his head, she would start to hiss at him, and if he tried to come out, she would charge. She is scary for such a tiny little thing; she has kicked my ass on more than one occasion.

But I love them both. I hope they at least learn to ignore each other.

I need your advice! Have you ever introduced a new pet to your current pets? How did you do it? Did they become friends? Is there hope? Please leave a comment with your pet advice!

Time to kick some depression and autoimmune ass

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I leave most doctor appointments feeling pretty frustrated, as if I’ve gotten nowhere and am starting over — all over again. Having an undiagnosed autoimmune disease means bouncing from doctor to doctor, telling my story over and over, and usually receiving a response something like, “Well, shucks, you’ve got a lot of symptoms, but fucked if I know what’s wrong! Also, all of your blood work is normal. You’re normal. Yay!” I try not to blame the doctors, but really — they’re doctors. They’re supposed to know, dammit!

I’m also always very hesitant to admit when I’m depressed. It’s easier to write about it here than it is to say the words out loud while looking someone directly in the eye.

But today — well, okay, technically it is now past 12am Saturday so this all happened yesterday — I shoved all of those fears aside and went to see Pam, my PA. And you know what? It wasn’t bad. At all.

Pam asked what I was there for, and I right away admitted that I’m having a hard time with my depression, and that things weren’t going too well with my rheumatologist. When I explained to her how I’ve been running through cycles — wanting to kill yourself one night and then being high on life the next two days is so not normal — she immediately agreed that I need to be tested for bipolar disorder and drew up a plan of action.

“I’d rather start you on medication used to treat bipolar disorder right away so that we can see if it works,” she said. We then discussed a few psychologists and a pain management specialist that she really likes, and narrowed it down to psychologist Dr. M and pain therapist Dr. P. We also decided that I would try Seroquel, a medication used to treat bipolar disorder. She explained that she has people start with 50mg for three days, then 100mg for three days, then 150mg for three days, then 200mg for three days, and so on, and that I would start to notice the effects within a couple of days. She also explained that people with bipolar disorder don’t normally respond to regular depression medication — or that it does odd things to them — which would explain why Zoloft basically made me a zombie and why Cymbalta made me hyper as a kangaroo on crack. She gave me samples of the Seroquel so that I wouldn’t have to pay for several different prescriptions, and said that she would see me back in two weeks to check on how the meds are working (and to call her in the meantime if anything comes up). I’m to call Dr. M before I contact Dr. P and am to start seeing Dr. M as soon as I can get in.

Then we moved on to my mystery autoimmune disease.

I told her that my aunt has Crohn’s, which I had apparently forgotten to tell her before. I also told her about the weird thing with my hands (I sometimes get little “spots” that are sensitive to the touch, as if I’ve been burnt or scraped, but there is nothing there). She confirmed my suspicions; this is another classic autoimmune symptom. She said that autoimmune diseases can attack the skin cells, so that is why I have that sensation. I’ve had this since childhood but never thought anything of it; I thought it was normal up until a week or so ago, when my hands were pretty much covered in these little invisible spots and I couldn’t let anything touch them because it fucking hurt.

We discussed me getting a colonoscopy to test for Crohn’s, and she said that she would contact my rheumatologist for his reports to see if he had any thoughts as to which autoimmune disease it could be before sending me to a gastroentologist. The last report he sent her was in September, and I continued to see him once a month through to November. I told her about how he didn’t really seem to remember me from visit to visit, and how each visit his ideas would change; one visit he would suggest that it was my birth control, the next he would send me for more blood work. From her face, I could tell she agreed with me that he is pretty out of it. (He’s a nice guy — don’t get me wrong! — but he’s pretty old. His brother was exactly the same way: nice, but very forgetful and a little cooky.)

Pam is going to get my reports from Dr. G (rheumatologist), and when I see her again in two weeks we’ll go from there.

I may not have gotten any solid answers this time, but I still feel like I got somewhere. I got the ball rolling on taking care of my mental health, which is ironically the easiest thing for me to fix (with counseling and medication, and with a diagnosis that will hopefully confirm my suspicions of bipolar disorder*), but it’s always hard for me to admit that I need to get help and to actually go get the help. I got the ball rolling on my physical health again, as well. I feel like I got a lot accomplished, because I took the steps I needed to take.

*Other people around me have also seriously suggested that I may be bipolar, including a social worker I used to see when in high school. Ms. Amenta, wherever you are, I miss you so much. You were the best.

PS: I should totally just make a “Depression” category.