Day 3 of tapering off

Hang in there!

It just takes a while for your body to realize it need to up the amount of natural pain killers it produces. It could take at least a week -- sometimes much longer -- for this to happen. That's why I'm working on getting down on a much slower pace. If you're too achy to exercise, you can always try massage or acupuncture. That usually helps me. No matter what, though, you're not going to be pain-free -- especially at the beginning. It took a while for your body to get used to being on the meds & it will take about as long for it to get used to getting off them.

Hang in there & take care of your self.

--> sending happy thoughts your way --> --> -->

frances :)

I was taking 4-5 a day of my meds.
The past 2 days I have been down to between 3 and 3.5 per day, maybe a little less. They are lozenges, so I can control how much of it I suck on before I take it out of my mouth. It's been really hard. Plus, the problem with the mice eating my meds on Sunday & then running out completely has made things worse because my body is just starting to re-adjust from the shock. I got super sick & am trying to recover from that and keep some food down.

I'm going to try to head to work in a few minutes, so hopefully that won't be too much for me. I put one of the Catapres patches on last night. I know those usually take a day or so to kick in so I'm planning to cut down to 3 or less doses per day starting either tomorrow or Saturday. My goal is to get off of taking daily doses at least by Thanksgiving. My plan is to go down 0.5 dose about every 3 weeks. I've done it faster than that, but I have a minor heart defect so we're going to try to watch it a little closer this time & hopefully prevent too many of the extra heartbeats I was getting when I went down every week. I'm told it's not too big of a deal, but it causes very sharp chest pains & is exhausting so I think I'd rather just avoid it all together;) Please don't worry this can happen to you -- it's a rare birth defect I have that is always present but symptoms are exacerbated from rapid withdrawal. :) If I can manage to go quicker I'd like to, but I know the beginning and the end are usually the roughest so I built in some extra time to those weeks.

The other problem is that I have been gagging a lot. I know my med suppresses coughing, so I'm wondering if maybe I don't have another problem (like bronchitis or such) that was being covered up by taking so much of my pain killer medicine. My PCP doesn't want to test me or anything until I get off of the narcs. I may have to have another conversation with her soon if I don't improve once the Catapres kicks in because I've gotten so raw that I'm coughing up blood. I've told her that, but is sure it is because of the withdrawal & told me to just stick it out. I've never had that as a withdrawal symptom before (and I've gotten off of much stronger meds than what I'm on right now) so I want to get a second opinion if it doesn't resolve soon. Hopefully this won't throw me off my plans. I'm pretty determined to stick with them.

:) The Jam sounds super yummy. Raspberries were on sale by the quart at the store, so maybe I'll try to pick up some of the gelatin stuff & make some yummy jam for myself. :-P

Have a good day & stay strong!
frances

Thanks, Ry. That's a great idea about keeping them in the micro. I think I'm going to try that going forward. That's probably the safest place since I don't use the micro very often. I had the pest people out today. They found out the mice are coming in from behind my dishwasher. They put some more snap traps back there, so hopefully we'll catch all the evil little critters quickly, but I guess you can never be too safe. ;)

I read on-line that some people use dark hot cocoa and/or a tsp of honey to treat coughing fits during w/d's so I tried it and ... it worked! No problems since this morning & I've only had 1.5 doses of my med so far. I'm going to keep trying that & hopefully it will keep working. I got sick mid-morning, so I didn't make it to work today, but I'm shooting for tomorrow. At least now I'm armed with a new "weapon".

I'm not sure about chamomile tea helping with muscle aches, but it definitely helps with nausea. You can make it iced w/a little bit of warm honey water (1 part honey:1 part hot water) and it's super yummy for the hot, hot summer.

Thanks so much for your encouraging words & your prayers.

Hope you're doing well today,
frances

mrspile? how are you holding up?

Frances? is it going okay for you?

been thinking of you both! hope today has been a little less uncomfortable for each of you and that you are not having too much pain.


Ry