I have good news to report. For the past several days, I’ve noticed a good trend. My depression seems to have lifted! I hadn’t realized how suffocating it was until it began to lift. The doctor recently added welbutrin to my medication regime, mostly in the desire to cut back on some of the symptoms and side effects I was having from the other meds they say I need to take. It has definitely reduced the drowsiness I was experiencing….we’ll have to see how my weight gain fares in the face of it. So far, I’ve lost about 20 pounds…but that is a drop in the bucket compared to where I want to go!
The doctor said that her goal is to get rid of one of the other antidepressants (Effexor XR) once she knows how I’m responding to the welbutrin. The other piece of good news that I have, which I didn’t even realize until today when I was reading a thread on a forum I go to for people who have been diagnosed with Schizophrenia, is that my tactile hallucinations have diminished greatly. For me these sensations would run the gamut from bugs walking on me, to being grabbed from behind. Needless to say, these things were quite distressing and even though I’d come to realize what they were when they occurred, I never was able to stop the startle response that I’d had from them. I’m not sure what medication to attribute this change to, probably the Loxitane which had granted me numerous years of peace from the illness in years prior. Makes me wonder WHY we didn’t naturally return to this drug to pull me out of the tailspin I’ve been in for the past three years right away…DUH!!
I would still like to pare down my list of medications. I’m on a sick amount of them (many for physical problems as well.) The cost is exorbitant and the whole thing just seems to me to be unneccesary. I’ve already cut back on a few of the “physical” ones, and am hoping that once I lose some more weight, some of them, like the heart/blood pressure medicine can be eliminated also.
But for now, I am just glad to be glad to be here.
I am glad to feel even some joy.
It’s been a long, long time.
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