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After about
twenty-three years
of crippling depression --literally twenty-three years--
I decided that I wanted to be on some medicine so I went to my
doctor and told him what was going on and
he prescribed me Effexor
and I was on
Effexor XR 150 mg
for awhile when
the doctor determined that it wasn't working well enough
so he prescribed me
Wellbutrin 300 mgs
as well--to take both at the same time.
So I did, and that seemed to work well enough for about
four years
during which time I ignored the
pretty well-known side effects of Effexor.
And then last week I told him that I was
starting to consider the side effects a problem
and uh... I wanted to go off the Effexor
so he told me to stop taking the Effexor
immediately and to increase the dosage of the Wellbutrin by the same amount
that I had been taking of the Effexor.
So I would stop the 150 mg of the Effexor
and start cutting the Wellbutrin pills in half
and taking one and a half everyday day
so that the dosage increased from 300 to 450.
So I started that on Tuesday,
took my meds around 6:30 in the morning and 0:01:37.100,0:01:45.920 went back to bed. I didn't have to be anywhere until eleven o'clock.
It was a Sunday--did I say Tuesday?
It was a Sunday
and I didn't have to be anywhere till eleven
and so I got up around 10:00,
took a shower, and left for work.
By that point I had a headache; I was feeling a little bit nauseated,
emotional, sort of cranky crossed with weepy,
but it wasn't terrible;
I thought I could get through the work day and I did.
during that time I read an article about
this fellow in Japan who had gone through
um... quite a lot of trouble using scuba gears--uh... scuba *gear*--during the tsunami
to rescue his wife and his mother
and found myself getting really sort of weepy about that, struggling not to cry. 0:02:40.279,0:02:46.459 But I managed to get through the work day without embarrassing myself and came home.
And then yesterday morning I
did the same thing with the medicines that the doctor had told me to do,
and that in fact I'd started the previous day.
I did not take the Effexor 150 mg, and I increased the Wellbutrin dosage by 50%,
so I'd taken a capsule of 300 mg and half a capsule of another.
By the time I got to work I'd noticed that the headache had never in fact stopped.
The headache had continued all through the previous day and through that day and I was still feeling pretty emotional
uh... but it seemed like it was worse than the previous day but not bad enough that I
would have to go home, or so I thought.
I took dinner around 4:20 because I was going to be working, or thought I was going to be working,
from 5:00 until 9:30 at night, and went to the desk--
I work in public service--
and went to the front desk at five.
Within about fifteen minutes I was feeling really bad. My throat was constricted,
very very tight,
I could feel my pulse in my forehead, my face was extremely hot,
and I felt really really nauseated.
Uh... sitting there I felt like I would probably vomit at any second,
or maybe start crying, or maybe both.
My coworker--without me telling her all of this--
saw that I was not feeling very well and she convinced me to go home, that she would cover for me.
And so I left and on the way home I began to cry and I could not stop.
I was out in public with people looking at me-- some just looking and looking away, others staring--
and I literally could not stop crying.
Um ...
By the time I managed to stop crying I had
uh...
stopped a few seconds and then immediately started up again.
It was really embarrassing
but uh... it was like I had no control over it as much as I was trying to.
By the time I got home I noticed that the nausea was worse and I was feeling dizzy
so I lay down for a while thinking that--
that it would be ok, basically that I could ride it out and the symptoms would pass.
And they just continued to get worse. They got worse to the point that when I sat up,
I was so dizzy that I felt like I would fall over.
But I went upstairs to talk to my roommate and told him about the different symptoms that I was experiencing--
at that point I was extremely short of breath and was panicking,
and knew that it was all in my head, so to speak,
but as much as I tried to calm down, I could not calm down.
So he called 911 and the EMTs came
and after talking with me for a while, doing their best to calm me down,
uh...
we ended up deciding that I would go to the hospital.
So I--
with their assistance--got up and went down the stairs. I could not make it on my own;
I was so dizzy that I was literally falling over when I was trying to go anywhere on my own.
Um... so I made it down all of the stairs with their help
and out the front door, and at that point
there was actually somebody holding on to me from in front of me
and somebody also holding on to me from behind because I just absolutely could not walk on my own.
And so I went to the hospital
and before I had even gotten off the gurney, before I'd been fully checked in,
I realized that I was going to vomit and so I got uh...
they brought me a bag and I vomited four times in a row
and uh [laughs] lay there with puke taste in my mouth
and crying and unable to stop trembling and feeling really cold and hot at the same time,
with my hands at this point tingling and my legs numb,
and, uh, holding a bag of vomit. [laughs]
So uh... they checked me in and I went to the waiting room
and that was what I did for hours: I waited to be seen.
there were people who were in much more serious condition than I was,
people who had life-threatening injuries,
and I was not one of them.
Uh... even people who had uh... breaks or serious sprains were going before I was at this point.
The headache was so intense that it hurt even to have my eyes open, the light
was just entirely too bright; I couldn't handle it.
And every time I opened my eyes, in addition to making the headache worse, it also made the dizziness worse,
made the nausea come back, and made me feel as if I was going to vomit again.
After hours in the waiting room I got to go to see the first person, whatever step it was,
the intake nurture or whatever she's called, who was asking me about my symptoms. I explained them as well as I could,
all the different things that I was experiencing--
the headaches, the dizziness and nausea, the vomiting
uh... the accelerated breathing, that I couldn't calm down; I was having this panic attack and knew it was
a panic attack but I still couldn't stop it,
and um... the pulse in my forehead, the tingling in my hands, the numbness in my feet,
and after that she sent me back out to the waiting room where I continued to wait
for a number of hours.
And finally saw the doctor, who informed me that he could go put me on some medicine for the nausea but he was hesitant to change any of the
other medicines or to do anything whatsoever
in terms of psychopharmacological business; you know, he wasn't going to prescribe anything for me
uh... basically I would just get the nausea medicine; I could have a glass of water finally;
and I would go home.
And so after a number of hours more and an I.V. drip, that is indeed what happened.
By that point I had already researched the effects of Effexor withdrawal
and one of my friends had mentioned that it was not just the withdrawal from the Effexor,
it was also the increase of Wellbutrin, and so there were two different things that might've caused this.
uh... Of the side effects of Wellbutrin, three of what I was--three of my symptoms fit.
Of the possible withdrawal effects of Effexor, *everything* that I was experiencing fit.
Everything was on that list.
And of the things on that list,
one of the more concerning things
which I thought I'd been lucky to avoid
was the "brain zaps" that people talk about.
I thought I had managed to avoid those altogether and in fact
uh... went to bed uh... after I'd been discharged,
sent back home,
and slept most of today
And only
an hour ago the brain zaps started. I don't know why they started now, after everything
else stopped, I thought I was done with the withdrawal symptoms.
In fact I'm not.
What I'm experiencing to me is not exactly like what other people have described
to me uh... it feels like
uh... like an odd sort of twitching sensation inside my head
and there is a noise that goes with it which sounds like a metal cap rattling on a table,
it's just this very quick sort of *zzzzzt* sound that just continues.
It'll happen,
maybe it doesn't happen again for five minutes; maybe it'll happen again for or five times immediately afterwards.
uh... I'm not able to determine any pattern in it whatsoever.
And that is where I stand at this point
I've decided I'm finding a different doctor, because in addition to making this I think ill-advised change in medicine, 0:11:47.290,0:11:52.650 uh... I also had called him last night before I called 911, before the EMTs came,
and he did not call back although he was the on-call doctor at his practice.
uh...
This morning when I spoke to him about it in what turned out to be a very brief conversation,
he told me that yesterday was his birthday
and that was why he did not call back.
So I have found a uh... I've decided that I'm *going* to find, rather, another doctor.
I'm looking for a psychiatrist, someone who deals specifically
with neurotransmitters, things that affect the mind, um, the way that the brain works.
uh... I do not want any sort of mistake like this again in the future and I have decided
that I will never take Effexor again for the rest of my life.
My doctor tried to convince me to go back on it and I just absolutely refused.
I will not do it.
I'm 35 now; I don't care if I live to be 105;
I'm never taking another one of those pills,
or even oneof those capsules, you know, one of those little
pellets inside the capsule.
This was honestly one of the worst experiences of my entire life.
Frankly I'm amazed that
apparently doctors are either unaware of some of the possible side effects of withdrawal
or they choose to downplay it.
My doctor, when he asked me this morning why I would not go back on Effexor,
asked me if it was "just because of the headaches"
um... and "just because of the nausea."
To me, being sent to the hospital completely incapacitated, in the most miserable physical experience of my life,
um...
nothing about that merits the adjective "just"--
"just" a headache, "just" nausea.
I've had worse experiences than that but none of it was purely physical.
This was seriously altogether one of the worst experiences of my life.
I feel so sorry for everyone out there, whoever there is,
everywhere who wants to try to get off this medicine.
There are supposedly ways to do it;
cold turkey is not one of them.