quincy said...
Hi..welcome to the forum.
I'm going to ask....have rectal meds not been part of your regimen? SEems like you'rve been on lots of others....maybe adding that to the mix will help.
Therapy helped my anxiety....took a while to "get it"...
But, ativan helped for a while...but eventually I got more depressed. You see, I use my depression to help my anxiety. Yes, i found that out in therapy.
Eventually, during a crisis event, I had requested Effexor. It helped with my depression, taking the edge off...and with the therapy I had to deal with the anxiety, it's helped a lot.
Unfortunately, it's an ongoing thing, I'll always have anxiety and depression, but learning to recognise my thoughts and behaviour patterns aleviates some of the distress that goea along with it.
q
thank you quincy!
i accidentally just deleted my very long reply. i don't know if you got it in an email alert
or if it maybe just said that you received a reply, but i feel pretty stupid for having done that.
anyway, thank you for your welcome and for being so well-informed always. i love reading your insights on here!
and in my reply, if you didn't get a copy of it, and for all of you sweethearts who replied to my question: i mentioned that i actually have tried rectal meds before and i find them to be very beneficial. also, that i went to see a physician's assistant today because i can't get in to see my doctor until the 7th of july and that is incredibly far away for how bad my flare is getting right now. the p.a. suggested (as my doctors have before during a very, very bad flare last year) that i consider remicade infusions. and, like i said last year, no thank you. at least not just yet. they're too pricey and the list of possible side effects are too intimidating. especially if there are other, less-invasive avenues yet unexplored...
last year's flare seemed endless and none of the usual stuff seemed to help anymore: the prednisone and the asacol both seemed useless. and maybe it was that the flare had progressed too far, but i really didn't feel ready for remicade, so i told my doc then that i'd heard of a newish drug they were trying for "autoimmune" disorders (low-dose naltrexone aka ldn) and he refused to give me a script
for it because the evidence was slim for these purposes. so i went to get a second opinion from another gastroenterologist and she said the same thing about
remicade or humira being the best thing for me, but she was more perceptive to my anxiety over biologic treatment and she thought i could prove it to myself that the ldn wasn't going to help me. so i started taking the ldn and at the same time my regular doc switched the asacol for the apriso and i also picked up some enemas (but not the cort-enemas, the other ones) and somehow i pulled out of the flare. god knows what to attribute it to: the ldn? the apriso? the enemas? all of the above?
either way, i'm back here in flaming-colon town and i'm suffering from all-over inflammation (as i seem to with each flare in the last three years). i mean to say, i get erythema nodosom (the red bumps of inflammation under the skin on the legs) and those become bigger and very painful if not treated right away and they can make it difficult for me to get around sometimes, as well as occasional inflammation of the eye, severe joint pain and occasional canker sores on the roof of my mouth, etc. so i wanted to get at my inflammation like yesterday! that's why i went to the p.a., but i'm still not willing to try the biologics that she also recommended until i've tried Everything else and/or i know that i can qualify for free or discounted infusions, so this p.a. lady and i agreed that we'd try prednisone again and some of the cortifoam enemas (which i've never tried specifically, but i'm satisfied with the plan) and she wrote me a script
for those things provided that if they didn't work, that i apply for free remicade and seriously consider it instead of constantly struggling with recurring flares and always falling back on steroids which may or may not even work for me anymore...
and, p.s., i asked her about
the incidence of people with ibd and anti-anxiety meds and she said that she didn't know off-hand, but that it was obvious that anybody suffering from this type of illness would have heightened anxiety and so i think i will talk to someone about
it, if only to calm some of my urgency when i fear i'm far from a bathroom... and maybe to seek some talk therapy, in general, would be a good idea for me too. thanks!
wow, that was maybe as long as my first reply. sorry. thank you for reading and thank you for your input on the subject. it's very greatly appreciated.
be well.