Hoping my depressive episode will end after my appointment today

Hi forever,

Hope you feel better real soon. I understand the feeling. I am just coming off a long depression and it included a brief hospitalization. My meds got messed up after I over dosed and now after 3 weeks I am just starting to feel better. I take prozac, lamictal and have just started a low dose of Abilify.

Unfortunately I am only sleeping about 5 or 6 hours a night and that is not good for me so I may have to get another med.
I am sort of scared to do that.

Thanks for your message Jade. Unfortunately my doctor had to reschedule my appointment for Thursday. But I convinced her to give me a prescription for Lactimal over the phone until then. It is only 25mg though and she said we can go only go up in 25mg doses. I'm so scared it's going to take a long time to come out of the depression.

You are probably right about the Seroquel over eating. I wasn't doing much emotional eating before going on the Seroquel. Not that I was perfect, but nothing this bad. Of course, I have been stressed out by the diagnosis and my mother hasn't exactly been a supportive influence in my life before or after the diagnosis.

My psychiatrist said the Seroquel will make me eat because I'll feel hungry. But it's never that way. I just mindlessly eat while I'm staring at the tv all day.

How do you find the lithium? I don't think she would put me on it for a few months because she doesn't like all the monitoring. But if I could convince her to prescribe Lactimal over the phone because of what I read on the interwebz, then maybe I'll give it a shot if what I'm currently taking still doesn't work;)

Have you read any of Judith Herman's books on chronic PTSD? They are academic and a little dry. But they helped me feel a little less 'crazy' about my multiple diagnoses.

The symptoms of chronic PTSD in the patients in her study were so similar to bipolar and borderline personality disorder. They had some of the PTSD flashbacks, anxiety, and somatic problems. But it went much deeper.

I have a hunch that we will be learning more about this cluster of mental illness over the next few years. Judith Herman drew on the research from Vietnam war veterans. But I think there will be a comparison made at some point with the people affected by childhood sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

No one wants to dredge those memories up and it is awful. But I know that the people affected are very motivated in their advocacy. So I'd imagine they wouldn't be opposed to the idea to taking part in research if it will help so many people. It is also a large sample so they would be able to draw some interesting clinical conclusions.

Anyway I went off on a bit of a tangent there. I hope you feel better. I'm going to the gym before I can pick up my prescription. I need to burn off the calories from yesterday!

Living Well said...
Hi Forever,
I did a quick scan over your posts - welcome :D. You seem so bright and intelligent; it must be so frustrating to have BP limit you.

I went on Lithium to lower my Seroquel because I was eating myself to death. I saw you posted on Tortoise's Emotional Eating thread... and the common denominator on that thread was 200mg Seroquel, 300mg Seroquel throughout the thread :(. It made me question whether it was emotional eating or Seroquel eating??

I still have further to go but 50mg Seroquel is whole lot better than 100mg of the stuff... I am soooo eager to get down to 25mg that I am actually frustrated with my meds which is unusual for me.

I'm also coming down from 100mg Tegretol that I've been on for 5 years. I've been on 75mg for a week and feel fine, apart from a little bit of slight physical tremoring. I think I'm a little bit more emotional - but life stresses has also cranked up recently, so I'm not sure that 25mg drop of Tegretol has anything to do with that.

Oh, also I'm a BPD and BP and PTSD. I got a lot of comfort when I came here and found Tortoise, because up to that time, I felt drowned by the amount and the severity of my dx's.

Tortoise showed me that a quality life is possible with those dx's and the dx's are our way to treatment, management and health. (She didn't do that directly... just by reading her posts).

Sorry it is all about me - usually not too bad like that, but just a little low atm.

Hope your appointment goes well. I do know that feeling that being sick is somehow letting my doctors down. I try to remember my sickness help keeps my doctors in a job in the profession of their choosing. Could you imagine a doctor who got disappointed because the people who came to see them were sick? lol

Cheers,

Jade x

Remember that you can't have 5-HTP with SSRI's as it could cause potentially fatal "Serotonin Syndrome".

My Dr. prefers lithium because it has been used for so long and is well studied. But, I'm also young and physically healthy (ironic, right?!). They did all the baseline bloodwork and ECG. I don't know when I'll need testing again.

I like Lithium because there is a TEST for therapeutic dosing. I've told doctors that I feel I am sensitive to medication. They seem to work at lower than therapeutic doses. In the case of lithium, that hunch I had proved to be true. What my Dr. expected to be sub-therapeutic actually WAS a therapuetic dose according to my blood testing. With this blood testing I won't be taking more medication than what is needed.

I hate blood draws, like shaking and tears rolling down my face hating blood draws. But I prefer knowing how much of the medication is in my system and what it is affecting. I feel safer.

I only had a couple bad medication experiences, but bad enough I don't want to try new meds. I went non-compliant on meds this past summer. I couldn't remember to take them! I did some journaling and one thing that came up was my fear of being maxxed out on meds and having to add another. I was taking 7 pills a day then! I'm down to low/moderate doses right NOW, but I know it's a matter of time before symptoms emerge and the doses go up again.

jade - thanks for the kind words! Means the world to me.