I know only one person taking Lyrica right now, and she says it makes her spacey. Given the fibro-fog one already suffers, I fail to see an advantage.
Have your doctors tried Cymbalta for you? I was already taking it for depression, so they boosted the dosage -- it's commonly prescribed for Diabetic neuropathic pain, and being used experimentally for fibro. I think it is helping.
Have the doc check your levels of B12, and CRP (C-reactive proteins). Apparently elevated CRP is pretty common in fibro patients, and can be controlled with daily aspirin, which also helps with the pain.
I haven't tried Cymbalta, and after the results from every antidepressant I've tried (y'all nearly lost me in December 2006 due to a paradoxical reaction to Welbutrin, and that made four out of four antidepressants that screwed me up) I'm not going to. God help me if I ever need them for depression. Apparently my brain chemistry is incompatible with such drugs. :-( I want to learn a lot about what kind of drug Lyrica is and how it works before trying it, even if it is available to me through the state insurance deal. I've had problems with muscle relaxants and anti-anxiety meds too. If Lyrica is another brain-chemistry-med like all but one of the drugs I've had adverse reactions to (the other one is pseudoephederine), then I'm going to be very nervous about it.
I've heard of lots of people having trouble with Wellbutrin. In my case, it just makes me manic, and that does nobody any good; in other cases there are health problems like you describe. Brain chemistry is scary stuff and our work with it is experimental at best. I'm glad you survived the experience, though I wish you hadn't had to go through that!
You know the ramp fom the inner loop of the Baltimore Beltway to 295 North -- sudden sharp turn overlooking a big, steep hill? In this case it was a matter of very nearly driving off of that at 70MPH because shifting my foot from the accelerator to the brake seemed like it was just way too much bother. That was just the most immediately life-threatening symptom of several. Paralyzing inability to make decisions, breaking down in tears in the car because I couldn't figure out which direction to go first when I had a handful of errands to do, not wanting to bother to check traffic before crossing the street on foot ... I was a mess.
Tricyclics made me depressed. Effexor made me depressed. Welbutrin took me all the way to despair. Those drugs have saved a lot of lives, and made many more lives worth living again, but they're apparently poison to me. And Klonopin made me into an ugly rage-fiend, losing my temper, punching holes in walls -- I reverted to the me you recognize after I got off it, but the summer I was on it I really thought I was losing my mind.
In contrast, the muscle relaxant and the Neurontin just made me wake up feeling hung-over every morning, or wake up with the taste of stale coffee grounds in my mouth every morning (I've forgotten which did which). The doctor who prescribed the one with the coffee grounds effect said that symptom meant that I was at the highest safe dose for me, and it wasn't helping enough at that dose, so there went that one.
So an anti-seizure drug has me a bit cautious. I really want to talk to a major-league brain-chemistry expert about it, but I don't know how likely that is to happen, nor whether the way Lyrica works is well enough understood yet to be able to assess the likelihood of it screwing up my neurons like these other drugs.
I think I can picture you manic -- no, no, really I guess I can picture you hypomanic and kindasorta extrapolate a little, not the same -- and yeah, I can see all sorts of scary-potential there.
"Brain chemistry is scary stuff and our work with it is experimental at best. I'm glad you survived the experience, though I wish you hadn't had to go through that!"
Yup. (Wish-I-hadn't-had-to-go-through-that but glad I survived it is how I feel too.) Thing is, doctors at the clinic level who don't realize -- or just too easily forget -- that even with the brain-drugs we understand best there's a lot of potential for scary atypical reactions, they make things all the more dangerous. The meds work just well enough often enough for people to forget how scary tinkering with the brain at that level is.
And of course there's always the annoyance of a doctor who hasn't bothered to read the PDR far enough to see the warning about paradoxical reactions and doesn't trust a patient's ability to observe her own state, and thus insists that the drug can't be causing the depression and obviously you just need a higher dose. (Fortunately I didn't encounter that issue with the Welbutrin.)
There are doctors at EVERY level who don't understand drug side effects and/or interactions. My Internist tried to tell me that Provigil didn't have any interactions with my meds. My Psychiatrist told me no, at higher doses, Cymbalta + Provigil = Manic. In fact, I discovered this myself when I first restarted working out and wasn't getting enough sleep (it's a good thing my OTO brethren are tolerant folk)... anyway, I don't just ask doctors anymore. I read online, I pore through books, and I ask rude and pointed questions. Hell, it's my body we're throwing things into, and I don't even LOOK like a guinea pig!
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Have your doctors tried Cymbalta for you? I was already taking it for depression, so they boosted the dosage -- it's commonly prescribed for Diabetic neuropathic pain, and being used experimentally for fibro. I think it is helping.
Have the doc check your levels of B12, and CRP (C-reactive proteins). Apparently elevated CRP is pretty common in fibro patients, and can be controlled with daily aspirin, which also helps with the pain.
*hugs*
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B12 and CRP added to the list. Thanks.
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Tricyclics made me depressed. Effexor made me depressed. Welbutrin took me all the way to despair. Those drugs have saved a lot of lives, and made many more lives worth living again, but they're apparently poison to me. And Klonopin made me into an ugly rage-fiend, losing my temper, punching holes in walls -- I reverted to the me you recognize after I got off it, but the summer I was on it I really thought I was losing my mind.
In contrast, the muscle relaxant and the Neurontin just made me wake up feeling hung-over every morning, or wake up with the taste of stale coffee grounds in my mouth every morning (I've forgotten which did which). The doctor who prescribed the one with the coffee grounds effect said that symptom meant that I was at the highest safe dose for me, and it wasn't helping enough at that dose, so there went that one.
So an anti-seizure drug has me a bit cautious. I really want to talk to a major-league brain-chemistry expert about it, but I don't know how likely that is to happen, nor whether the way Lyrica works is well enough understood yet to be able to assess the likelihood of it screwing up my neurons like these other drugs.
I think I can picture you manic -- no, no, really I guess I can picture you hypomanic and kindasorta extrapolate a little, not the same -- and yeah, I can see all sorts of scary-potential there.
"Brain chemistry is scary stuff and our work with it is experimental at best. I'm glad you survived the experience, though I wish you hadn't had to go through that!"
Yup. (Wish-I-hadn't-had-to-go-through-that but glad I survived it is how I feel too.) Thing is, doctors at the clinic level who don't realize -- or just too easily forget -- that even with the brain-drugs we understand best there's a lot of potential for scary atypical reactions, they make things all the more dangerous. The meds work just well enough often enough for people to forget how scary tinkering with the brain at that level is.
And of course there's always the annoyance of a doctor who hasn't bothered to read the PDR far enough to see the warning about paradoxical reactions and doesn't trust a patient's ability to observe her own state, and thus insists that the drug can't be causing the depression and obviously you just need a higher dose. (Fortunately I didn't encounter that issue with the Welbutrin.)
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