LauraJK - Sister has lost will to live, part 3

Thanks so much Traveler. I'm so sorry for all of the posts

Thank you so much Traveler. Honestly, throughout this nightmare, the only help we have gotten has been from these forums--people we have never met. I'm eternally grateful to everyone here. I've never been so terrified in my life.

Tick- Withdrawal is from Ativan--my sister is having a terrible time with it. It was prescribed to her after she became severely depressed on Trazodone (wanted to die, resisted food/drink) and had to cold turkey off the Trazodone. So the Ativan was prescribed to my sister when her brain was already in a severe drug-induced depression. The Ativan made the depression even worse, by the time we realized what the Ativan was doing, it was too late, b/c we then learned that it's highly addictive and you have to go through hell to get off of it. I think my sister is having an especially horrific time b/c of the MR/Down Syndrome (sensitive chemistry), Lyme, the Trazodone already inducing a depression

Yeah i know they are VERY difficult to get off of. I have a family member that had a very hard time getting off of them but once she finally withdrew completely from them she was so relieved.

Tick--Thank you so much for support! Sorry to hear you had a family member go through this too. I pray my sister can make it. But when I read the horror stories over at benzobuddies, I get really scared b/c my sister is MR and just doesn't have the coping skills of the average person. Plus, she simply doesn't understand what's happening to her.

Lymehater- thanks so much for your support. I don't think we have anyway of getting CBD oil (I guess b/c that's healthy for you)


GOOD NEWS:
I just got a call from my mother--she and my father went to the doctor (without my sister) and they were able to get the prescription for Vistaril. This is our last hope--it worked to calm her at the hospital, so hopefully, it will work to calm her at home.

YAY about your parents being able to get the Vistaril! I hope it works as well at home for her!!!

Laura - don't apologize - you've got so much on your plate to deal with.

Yes, medical error - one after another...I am so fed up with the medical system...those I mentioned are just a few that happened to him.

But, you are fortunate that you have your parents advocating as well for your sister.
You mentioned PTSD. I bet you are at that point...it's truly a nightmare to go through.

There were very few health professionals that really understood what my father was going through..
one was a psych nurse who came for a home visit and shook her head when she saw he had been prescribed ativan....and zopliclone.

Did you research using the Valium to help her withdraw from the ativan? Or was it not viable - not able to get anyone to prescribe them?
I've read several times that it is an easier withdrawal - I think because of it's longer half-life?

Girlie- yes, we are at 1/16 of the .5 pill That's only an approximation- we had to do the cuts ourselves. It's the best we could do w/out anyone helping us. And as we have been going forward in time, it has seemed as though it has gotten harder and harder for her to adjust to the new lower level. We have been at 1/16 (?) for a while, but within the past two weeks, the anxiety and desperation have upticked to unmanageable levels (she's getting so frustrated w/us for not killing her that she is getting violent and hard to calm down).

We just gave her the dose of Vistaril (not clear if it's the exact dose as was at the hospital). She already started up (shouting now) at 4pm, gave her the dose at 4:30, so far 4:45 no effect. Honestly, I'm shaking right now, b/c if this doesn't settle her, I don't know what we are going to do. She was calm today (for the most part) until 4 --from now until 10pm is the danger time.

We are desperate to manage her at home. I don't know what we will do if we have to put her in the hospital. We need it on record that we are not doing this on our own and are in consultation w/physicians on this process. Right now,. she's shouting at me please get me outa here. We have to oblige her (otherwise she will get aggressive with us). We go to the back door, mother and I step out, then my sister shouts at us to push her out and stab her--we are frozen in time, then she cries, turns back inside and throws stuff. We go through this drama all night, every night almost on the hour. Had an attack last night. But it wasn't always like this--we used to have calm evenings.

Oh, God, so far, she hasn't settled down. Maybe the dose wasn't as strong as the hospital. We have to figure this out.

Honestly, I don't think I can live with myself if we aren't able to get her out of this. One mistake of trusting one doctor has destroyed us. My sister is an innocent, we are the ones who took her to the doctor, we are the ones who gave her the pill at night. I'll never forgive myself.

also, it wasn't always like this. Back in Feb we took her for a walk outside and she didn't demand we kill her, also last fall, I got her out to walk around the house day after thanksgiving and once we sat on the porch while my parent did the leaves. But now things are at a new intensity. I'm honestly terrified. She's still screaming about not being able to lie down and wanting to go outside.

Post Edited (LauraJK) : 4/20/2017 3:05:56 PM (GMT-6)

Also look into motherwort and pasque flower this is what. Uh we recommends for psychiatric crises

She's a tennis player! My favorite sport.

She looks happy in this photo - beautiful - thanks for sharing this with us.

I am so sorry this nightmare is happening to your dear sister.

Hope you all are able to get some sleep tonight.

Jenny--

Thanks so much for all of the suggestions. We are honestly scrambling to come up with other options-we are desperate to avoid the hospital and more psychotropic drugs (she has absolutely no tolerance). We have two possible ways of getting in home support services (we are just nervous someone will come here and say she needs to be in a hospital and call somewhere and get us in trouble).

Next, we consulted the attorney about the medical power of attorney (b/c the hospital asked for this, telling us that my parent's guardianship did not cover psychiatric care--so they can override us and poison her). Attorney disagreed with the hospital, said guardianship is all my parents need. And I looked at the medical power of attorney papers online and they don't even apply and would not be valid b/c my sister is not mentally competent to sign the (b/c of the MR). So we are still a bit nervous about that.

The attorney warned my mother not to say we are going this on our own b/c "they" don't like to hear that (i.e. the doctors are the ones that did this to my sister, yet they are still the authorities and we don't know what we're talking about). We already met w/my sister's PCP yesterday for the Vistaril (consulted by phone back when we started the taper and got advice), so technically she qualifies as the doctor we are working with on this. We are going to try to get a consult w/Dr. Sherry Rogers (we have her books, and in her newsletter, she talked about benzo poisons and was available for consult). Hopefully, this will give us the appearance of more backup and working with a doctor.

But, we are really looking for other options. My sister is very social and I think she would benefit from other health workers coming in--even if they didn't really do much but engage with her. She really likes attention from guys (loves to talk sports), so we'll see what we can do.


Girlie and Sillysheep

--thank you so much for the support. We survived the night, and are having a bit of a better morning. Right now, we are trying to tell ourselves that this is just a bad patch we are going through and hopefully it will pass (I honestly still don't understand how things suddenly got so bad--we used to have calm evenings, none of this intense drama)

-We haven't given up on Vistaril, though it didn't work like at this hospital. Right now, I'm actually thinking that she's developed some sort of phobia to being in our house (she associates some diarrhea accidents, which terrify her, with our house), so maybe that's another reason she calmed at the hospital. At night, she talks about wanting to get out of here before dark b/c she's afraid "something bad might happen" and I know she's referring to a diarrhea accident that happened last week. And she really is terrified about going to the bathroom (I think b/c of the unpredictable diarrhea from w/drawal), so much so, she even told me she'd rather die than do #2

-Tonight we'll try a double dose of benedryl and see if that helps calm her

-Also, we are going to try to get a consult w/a doctor from the benzowise doctor site. We'd like to just get his take on whether we could do the water titration method the rest of the way and possibly divide her dose (explored that earlier)--it's kind of hard to do now b/c our pieces are small and tend to crumble.

Post Edited (LauraJK) : 4/21/2017 7:11:40 AM (GMT-6)

Traveler- Honestly, we've tried to tell her that she can get better and back to her life, but she no longer believes us. Thanks for all your thoughts on titration--we appreciate all suggestions and ideas

In process of scheduling consult w/Dr. Sherry Rogers on benzo withdrawal, so hopefully she can help. The doctor up in north NJ from the benzowise doctor site, is no longer working with withdrawal.

The latest seems to be that we have almost perfect calm in the morning until 4pm, then everything changes and suddenly she's shouting for us to get her out of her and how she wants to die. So we have 8 hours of fine and tolerable, and then 5-6 hours where we are terrified we aren't going to make it through. If it was just the shouting, then that would be fine. But she demands we take her out (does not understand intellectually that we cannot kill her) and she gets angry--there didn't use to be a risk of attack, but now there is. I just tried what the doctor suggested w/Benedryl--so far no calming. I'm scared we won't survive--my mother is 78 and already has high BP, and I honestly feel like I'm going to have a heart attack from the stress--my BP is now high, though it never used to be.

Also doesn't look like our lawyer is going to be much help--she said we are covered b/c of guardianship, but talked down to my mother (not hearing what we said, which is that my sister was emotionally fine until these drugs) and seemed to insinuate that we should really trust the doctors (when they did this to us in the first place). Not sure where we turn now. talk about living under medical tyranny--govt does nothing about the benzos, but wants to go after marijuana