I'm meeting Dr Bodenstab who I am praying with all my heart will be my new family doctor. Today I begin dropping my medication dose from 300mg to 262.5. We do that for a week, then we drop it again.
If everything goes the way it's supposed to, and I wean off okay with no setbacks then May 10th will be my first medicine free day. I'm excited for that day.
I'm spending inordinate amounts of time on the computer, and reading. I don't want to make all this public for any sort of pity party. Honestly, I wish nobody knew. It's embarrassing more than anything. I'm hoping that someone, somewhere will read this and start asking questions regarding what they're taking. I hope they'll take a little time to look into it, to question why their one medication has led to another and possibly another yet.
I don't do very many things half-way. Except clean my house, but that's a different story. I figure if my diet and exercise can change this, then what else are we as a family unknowingly loading our bodies with? I'm not supposed to have MSG among other things while tapering my medication. Going through my cupboards, do you have any idea how many things I eat (things I think are HEALTHY!) have MSG in them? I don't know what MSG is. I know what it stands for, and what it's for, but what is it exactly? A zucchini looks like a cucumber, it is yummy in stir fry, blended it will keep muffins and breads incredibly moist. It's a vegetable, in the squash family. It grows on a vine on the ground. I don't know what MSG is. I don't know what Splenda is, except that it's a sweetener that is supposedly better for you than aspartame. I know that my spell check doesn't recognize it. Unbleached flour is all I'm allowed to have, preferably whole wheat. But it's brown. Eww. But if I think for a second, why am I okay with bleached flour. I lock up my bleach to keep it away from Bella. But I feed it to her, or bath her with it?
When I punched in the ingredients in Bella's shampoo the other day, I did not know one of them except water. And the list was LONG. I typed every last ingredient into a dermatology index website and was horrified by what came up. This ingredient caused three rats to die. This other ingredient attacks the central nervous system (that's why it's labeled 'calming'). Someone working in the plant making Bella's shampoo died because of accidental exposure. Some of the ingredients do not have to be listed because they are not things that are being intentionally put into the shampoo. They're a chemical result of mixing two other chemicals, and thus, the FDA has passed a law saying that manufacturors don't have to list it as an ingredient. Even if that chemical reaction is toxic to my baby. Even if it gives her cancer in ten years. Why are babies getting cancer at all?
I have now found a website and ordered Bella an all natural baby shampoo. It came yesterday, and I was skeptical. I bought Bella's shampoo because I loved the way it smelled and I'd heard never to use Johnson and Johnsons. Except that they own Aveeno. Oops. Way to check the fine print, Mellie. Last night we gave her a bath and I washed her down being careful to avoid her eyes. You should with every shampoo, because if it says tear free, then there is a problem. It's no better for their eyes, it just deadens the nerves it touches to feel the pain of the chemical in their eyes. Promise. Go look it up - I didn't believe it either. I thought my mom was full of hooey. Anyway, the soap worked great. Her skin was CRAZY soft and her hair was detangled and felt like silk. And she smelled like lavendar. Not like lavender scent, but like a handful of fresh lavender. I LOVE it. And it's no more expensive than what I was buying before. And I can read each of the four ingredients on the back.
This weekend we're going farmer's marketing. I'm excited. I love that BC affords us that all year round. We are going to start buying meat from a farm. With animals. That eat grass and grain, of all things. I made organic spaghetti the other night, it was awesome. It did not require me to make the sauce from scratch. Mario Batali makes a jarred tomato sauce, you can buy it at Costco for $2.50 a jar. It's incredibly good. Add some ground sirloin and some fresh basil and even some real parmesan cheese, and it's delicious. We all ate it, and Peter isn't a spaghetti fan at all.
I'm eating farm eggs. Have you ever eaten a farm egg next to a grocery store egg? You would be shocked at the difference. One has a flavor.
We are giving up white flour. I know. Pasta!! But I'm finding some whole wheat brands that don't taste like cardboard. I'm also going to attempt to make it on my own. CHEAP, and delicious. We had grain fed chicken thighs the other night and first of all, they were yummy, but they were also a third of the price of chicken breasts - non-organic. When did we decide that we only eat the breasts? I love dark meat, I think it has a flavor. I'm still working on sauces. Other than the tomato sauce, they're the hardest to find. Maybe the market will have some.
Anyway, we're making huge lifestyle changes over here, and I'm feeling pretty good about it so far. I've cut my caffeine intake to one cup in the morning and I'm getting fewer brain zaps (none so far today, and only a few yesterday) and I haven't killed anyone! I'm sleeping better, though the dreams you have when you go through withdrawal are just insane. No words. They're just nuts. And VIVID. I wake up every morning certain they've happened. Be gone from me you devil drug!!
I may start a blog just about the whole food and lifestyle thing. The goal is to find it for a comparable price (lets face it, I don't need something to spend more money on) or cheaper, and have it be better for us, and still maintain the quality or taste that I'm looking for. So far, the soap and the tomato sauce have been my major accomplisments.
If you could pray for our doctors appointment tomorrow, we'd sure appreciate it. I so need it to go well. I'm already earning a name for myself in the BC medical system, and it's 'non-compliant'. Doesn't look good. Neither does doctor hopping. Here's hoping this is my last hop, it's all I have energy for.
Love you guys. Lots.
2:01 PM
Dr B was a nice guy. He listened, didn't make a single comment about me needing medicine, but did say that he's seen people stop quickly or wean too quickly and had them end up worse than when they started. Doesn't sound like a pill pusher. He had a natural supplement drink on his desk. He checked Bella's ears when I said she'd had a cold for a few days and I couldn't make her eat.
I have one week and then he's seeing me again to check into my full mental health, and physical work up. He says he doesn't want to walk into a story half way through and just start changing medication. That seems reasonable. I can pass a mental health test. No worries. In the meantime, he thinks weaning as slowly as possible is the best course of action.
Allow for huge sigh of relief - here. Now if I can get Bella to stop choking, I bet I could get rid of these stupid zaps.
2:01 PM
Actually - for all my Sask friends, Dr B just moved here from Saskatoon! At least I know he's got good roots :)
11:54 AM
Such good news!!! I'm so glad things are looking up. A dr that cares is worth so much!
11:55 AM
Also, I've actually heard of him before! I know someone who went to him, though I couldn't tell you who if my life depended on it!
5:19 PM
I really hope that your new doctor works out for you. And what the heck is with being "non-compliant" in the health system? That is the weirdest thing. It's the health system, not the legal system. What is wrong with not complying with everything that they say?
And good job! That's awesome. We should go farmer's market shopping together one of these days... when I can actually get out of bed again.
BTW You shouldn't have to be embarrassed about it at all. And I just want you to know that you have helped us already. Lately Kyle has been getting migraines at work. It's awful. So he finally went to the doctor. She suggested that he get an eye exam. She also thought it may be due to his sleep apnea, but also she prescribed him a drug which, while in small doses is used to treat migraines, among other things, is an anti-depressant. Amitripylene? Anyway, so guess what it has? Withdrawal symptoms. Because of you posting this, I checked it out a bit. And we decided he wouldn't take it, at least until he got his eye exam. So there you go. You've already helped us. :) Thank you!
9:13 AM
I'm on amitriptyline for my arthritis pain and it IS ROCKING MY WORLD. But, if you remember me telling you about this a while ago, it does indeed have some intense withdrawal symptoms, which I didn't know about either until I forgot to take it once or twice. Not fun, no indeed.
But holy crap I love that stuff. I'm never going off. I kiss the bottle good night before bed. I have a photo of it in my wallet so that every now and then when I'm away from home I can take out the picture and think about how happy it makes me. Last week I bought it flowers and took it out for dinner.
12:26 PM
LMAO @ Becky. Loads of pain medicine has withdrawal symptoms. I lived on Percocet for a week after getting my wisdom teeth out and holy moly. I was not a nice girl, and I puked a lot, which doesn't seem like something you want to do with open wounds in your mouth.
Sorry - ewwwwww. Anyway. I haven't heard much about Amitryptaline, especially with small doses (so long as you know WHAT a small dose is - I sure didn't.) But people who have had massive surgery and things like that often get hooked on painkillers (I have a friend whose cop husband had to hide her morphine eventually) but one of the horrible side effects from large doese is the fact that people develop sleep problems, which leads to sleeping pills which often cause anxiety, which leads to antidepressants. It's a slippery slope.
I'm SO not against pain meds. Arthritis is a proven thing. It's real. They can tell you what it is and why it causes pain and work with it. No worries. But there is no test for a chemical imbalance in your brain. None. It's a theory, and I think I have a problem with theoretical medicine being passed off as though it's fact. Don't call me damaged when you can't even define what damaged is. Stupid doctors. Argh.
9:47 PM
Amitriptyline isn't a painkiller. It's an antidepressant that acts on nerve cells in the brain. Which is why in addition to depression, it is often used to treat chronic pain like migraines and arthritis. It's actually not licensed for use in treating pain, but the fact is that it sometimes helps with those things and so doctors prescribe it for them. The type of arthritis I have is no easier to see than depression. There are no conclusive tests in most cases. (Mine is one of them.) No x-rays, no blood tests, no obvious observable symptoms. So right now, my physical pain is no more of a fact than many people who suffer with the mental pain of depression or anxiety or any other mental illness. (Actually, lol, I have no physical pain right now. So it isn't real at all! Holla.)
The thing is, I tried lots of jazz before I tried this. And I am SO grateful to my doctor, who is neither stupid nor careless, (and it sounds to me like your doctor was a little of one and a lot of the other) for suggesting I try it. BUT he didn't tell me all the possible side effects and withdrawal symptoms that come with it. He told me there were some, and then I looked them up, and decided I was willing to deal with those if it helped. And there's no denying this fact: It helped. A lot.
I have friends who take amitriptyline and other antidepressants for depression, and they swear it's a fact: They help. A lot. Enough to make it worth all the crap that comes with it because they were desperate. That's not everyone's story, but I don't think that makes it less of a fact that they help some people. If my doctor had waited for observable physical evidence that amitriptyline works on pain, I'd still be suffering for no reason.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be cautious and try other options first. It just means, to me anyways, that we can't just write off some of these drugs as only harmful. They can be, but they aren't always.
What makes me sad is that your doctor should be there to help you when you are suffering. Not damaged, (did he really say that? brutal) but suffering. And he shouldn't be pushing open heart surgery when all you need is some exercise and maybe a better diet. You know? He went right for the big guns without even trying something else first or at least warning you that open heart surgery was risky. That's the real bad guy in this story, not the drugs.
(At least to me, but I may be a bit of a druggy. Lisa gave me percocet when I got eight teeth out, and I luuuuuurved that stuff. I remember saying to my mom how I totally got how people could get addicted. So peaceful... So happy... Like floating on a fluffy white cloud in a soft blue sky over fields of feathers and cotton candy. Oh percocet. I miss you so.)
10:24 AM
I also loved the Percocet, until I tried to go off :) My doctor told me not to leave it on the front seat of my car or homeless people would smash my windows to get it. Once I took it, I knew why. I felt warm, heavy, sleepy and totally great. I'd be an addict too if I were homeless.
I just worry about drugs that have no long term studies done on them simply because they haven't been out that long. I worry about what Doctors don't say. You should NEVER have been put on a drug that wasn't explained very clearly to you. If you decide that the side effects are worth it to you, then that's amazing. Good for you, but I dislike that doctors don't allow people to even make an informed decision. They're making it for people and that's what I have a problem with. They don't realize that people are hurting and desperate and I think that's a really miserable time to not tell people. It's just "this will make you feel better" and anyone with a half a brain in their head would take it.
An epidural has consequences. Some of them go terribly wrong. However, when they had to give me a bunch of other meds to get Bella out safely, I wanted mine. But I'd been very well informed about what it was and what it did before I was in labor. Because if I hadn't been, I wouldn't have cared if I had a one in five chance of dying, I wanted that pain gone and that eclipsed everything else in my head. Thank goodness I knew ahead of time. I picked it, and had they paralyzed me, I would have had nobody to blame but me. I chose it. No big deal.
Though I gotta tell you - NO IDEA that it stayed in your back. None. I thought it was a shot. In and out.
7:55 PM
I knew it stayed in your back... But does it stay in there like, forever? Actually, now that I think about it... It doesn't make sense that it comes out after, I've never heard anyone talk about it coming out. So... It stays in there forever?
That, I did not know. Of course until about a year ago, you couldn't get them in Yorkton, so there was really no point in reading up on them. I had a spinal. Which is just what you thought the epidural was. One shot. I never read up on those either, or c-sections at all, because I wasn't going to need one. lol
3:04 AM
Nope, not forever. It's exactly the same as an iv. They took it out sometime after. And everyone talks about the needle. I never even saw it.
I also never looked up c-sections. Stupid, given how close I came to getting one.