Yeah, I don’t recommend it

Yesterday was a living nightmare.

I did what my RA told me. I took my Ambien, Soma and that shit Cymbalta Wednesday night before bed. I do not recommend ever doing that. I was soooo…hell, drugged up, it wasn’t funny. I don’t even remember driving to work Thursday morning. I finally came home around noon because I just could not function. Everything was in slow motion. My skin was crawling. I felt numb. It was ugly.

When I got home I called Danielle before I could go into full panic mode. She told me my RA was stupid, which I fully agree with. I was telling her all of the symptoms and her diagnosis was that I was basically od’ing (without actually od’ing) with all of the meds in my system. I also called my RA’s office and told them what was going on. Their response…go to the ER and have my system flushed out. Before doing that however, I called Alicia, whom I just love from my GP’s office, and she was of a different opinion. She said that they wouldn’t flush my system for 30mg’s of Cymbalta. That I just needed to ride out the storm. I wasn’t really keen on that idea, but it beat the hell out of the ER option.

I consciously made the decision that I would not take any other meds until this shit was out of my system. In making this decision, I knew I would be in pain the today. It was a chance I was willing to take. By 3pm yesterday I had THE migraine from hell. I was already hurting before this, but I could handle it. But when the migraine started, all of the other pain intensified 100 fold. I wanted to just curl up and die. I couldn’t sleep either. Every time I tried my heart would speed up or slow way down. I was either too hot or too cold. It seemed like none of my systems were working right.

I finally laid down around 10:30 to try and get some sleep. I woke up a dozen times or so because I couldn’t get comfortable or the pain just got to be too much. I did get 3 hours solid sleep from about 6-9 am. Needless to say, I did not go into work today. There was no way in hell that was going to happen.

More results, more things wrong

Got a call from the RA’s office a week ago. The blood test results came back. Everything came back normal except one. I am Vitamin D deficient. Apparently extremely so. Normal levels are 30-90. Mine are at 6. I’m now on 50k units of Vitamin D once a week until further notice.

I went in to see the RA today for a follow up again. She asked how things were going with the meds I was on, etc. She wanted to try me on a drug called Cymbalta for the Fibro. I’ve heard of it, but didn’t know much about it. It’s an SSRI or some such thing. Anti-depressant. Umm…hello. No depression here. Why would you put me on an anti-depressant when I don’t have depression. Whatever. I’ll give it a go. I did make sure to ask her about all of the other meds I was taking and whether they should be taken with the Cymbalta. Her response was, oh yeah, you’ll be fine…let’s get a good start on this. Ok, fine.

So we’ll try it and see what happens.

The verdict is in…and about damn time

Back in October I was told to follow up with the rhuematologist to check to see if maybe I had Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus or some other like disease. Again, more blood was taken. (Why can’t they just use all the blood the hospital collected huh?) I’m to follow up again in 2 weeks for the results.

I also followed up with my gp because the pain still wasn’t getting any better, neither were the panic/anxiety attacks. They finally got me to agree to take a muscle relaxer (Soma) after she felt the tension in my shoulders. She was actually afraid to give me trigger point injections because I would flinch and she was barely touching me. Sooo…she gave me the Soma and told me to take that with the Lortab for the pain. Good times. Good times. Especially for someone who hates taking narcotics. Oh, and did I forget to mention that they also prescribed Zanax? Oh yeah, for the panic/anxiety attacks. Again…good times.

Back to the RA. All those tests came back negative. Surprise surprise. She finally asks me some pertinent questions, like does this hurt? And how about this? And this? She was going over all of the trigger points of Fibro. She looks at me and said, well, you’ve got Fibro. Really? Nooo. (rolls eyes) She then starts going over all of the symptoms and prescribes Ambien. I’m to take the Ambien, Soma and Lortab at bedtime. Apparently this is supposed to help me sleep. We’ll see.

Oh, and we’re taking more blood tests. Yeah me.