Running the treatment gauntlet

Imagine a pool. It starts off full of salt water. By the side of the pool sits a life guard, his job is to make sure that (a) the pool is full and (b) that there isn’t too much salt in the pool. However this particular pool has a slow leak from the bottom. To counter this ten men are hired to walk to a nearby sea, fill a bucket with sea water, and walk back to pour the water into the pool.

In a normal pool, the men fill their buckets from the Mediterranean sea, which has exactly the right level of salt for the pool. The pool stays full, and the salt level stays correct.

In a Tourette pool, however, the men fill their buckets from the dead sea. The dead sea has 4 times the salt of the Mediterranean, so as time goes on, the salt levels in the pool rise. The life guard notices that the pool is getting too salty, so as the next man comes to tip in his bucketful, the life guard talks to him, and he puts down his bucket and heads to the bar. When the second guy comes and tips in his bucket, the lifeguard also talks to him, and one by one the men put down their buckets and go to the pool bar.
Because the pool is leaking, the salt levels in it begin to drop, but so does the water level. It actually starts to drop quite suddenly after the last bucket is put in, and soon the water level has gone from full to too shallow to swim. The life guard runs over to the bar, grabs the men and they run back to the pool, pick up their buckets, and begin running to the sea to fill them up. The water level in the pool begins to rise at a moderate speed, but soon the men are drunk from the bar and are tired from all the running. So the life guard hires another 5 men to help bring in the water. So now there are 15 men lugging water from the sea to the pool. The pool level rises a bit, until the lifeguard notices that the pool is getting too salty…

I wrote this years ago as an attempt to explain why medication can make tics worse in the long run.  The pool is energy levels, the salt represents tics, and the men are the dopamine.

In the medication hunt (i.e. telling the men to take a break at the bar) you can really stuff around with the balance of things.  The wrong medication can have 500 men sitting totally smashed at the bar while one poor guy runs back and forth until he drops from exhaustion.
And one of the difficulties is that once these men are drunk, they stay drunk for a long time. While humans get rid of alcohol in a number of hours, it can take the dopamine men weeks to sober up.

So with that lovely mental image of inebriated men vomiting all over your frontal lobe; I shall catch you up on where I am.  This is probably more of a blog post, but I feel it has some good points to stress about medication.

I take so many tablets these days, I just go to the chemist where all my prescriptions are kept, and take one of each at night.  This is good, because I never forget my medications.

This is bad because I don't really pay attention to what I'm taking.

Somewhere in the last, oooh, 8 months I went from taking 60mg of Aropax to 300mg of Zoloft without noticing.  One time at the chemist I must have been uncharacteristically awake at the chemist's and I asked why they had given me Zoloft instead of my usual Aropax.  They looked at me funny and told me that I'd been on Zoloft for at least two repeats!  I still don't know when I switched, and am sure I was never told to by a doctor; but I just can't remember!
So piece of advice number one is:
When taking medications, have your chemical name, brand name and dosage written down somewhere you can easily find it.
(For help with chemical names go to the Medication page on this site)

So, after this little revelation I now knew why my anxiety is not being managed.  I also noticed (well, who wouldn't) that my weight is now 94kgs.  Gee, I'm so excited...I'm now obese!  (BMI=29!)

So, after losing and regaining my job (see Blog) due to full blown panic attacks I went to a new doctor (for that story, see the Blog as well!) and have been put on the only drug I've ever given a bad rating to-Abilify.

Now, last time I went off a drug, then back on, it was Prozac.  It was wonderful the first time, awful the next.  Abilify seems to be the opposite: I was nauseas, sore, tired and mildly hallucinating last time, well managed tics with little side effects this time.
I'll be honest, I'm still nauseas.  But that might also be because of my serotonin grabbing high sugar diet.

Now, the first thing I wanted to know was the effect on weight.  It's classed as "metabolism neutral" which made me jump with joy.  Perhaps now my daily runs and personal training sessions will actually help me to lose weight.

Second, I knew it was good for tics, that's why I was on it last time.

Third, It's also good for OCD, anxiety, and Depression.  So I'm looking forward to doing a complete med change.

And to demonstrate the helpfulness of writing down your meds I shall do my changing publicly.

(Please note I do my dates in the Australian way day/month/year)

to be continued...

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