Adventures in Lydy Land
Jan. 20th, 2007 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyIt's sucked to be me more than usual, these days.
Let me start on the basic primer on How We Got Here. Many and many a year ago, in a kingdom about a five hundred or so miles closer to the sea, I became miserable. Really, dysfunctionally, spectacularly miserable. After a decade, various doctors decided that it wasn't just hormones, after all. We began treating depression, and lo, Prozac was very, very good. For about two years.
Then we entered into the mountain range of antidepressants. We tried Paxil and Trazadone and many others whose names I no longer recall. Some of them worked, and some did not. Finally, a brave and lonely psychiatrist said, "Lo, Lord, by certain signs and portents that Thou hast sent unto me, I see that this Patient is Bi-Polar." And many beams of enlightenment did shine forth from heaven and pills of all shapes and colors showered down around her blessed patient.
Or something like that.
For reasons that nobody really knows, Serotonin Selective Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs to you) help with depression. We barely understand what re-uptake inhibiting is. Serotonin, not so much so. In a very real sense, psychiatry is in a Nineteenth Century phase of medicine. Serotonin does something, we take careful notes, then make theories based on those results combined with our currently inadequate understanding of the workings of the brain, do more studies, and serotonin does something unexpected. More notes, more studies, and shifting theories on what that damn organ called the brain really is in the first place. The brain is a terrible thing...too wasted. We've been working on an accurate model for centuries. What we've got are shadows of shadows of shadows with a few bright shiny spots which will probably turn out to be reflected light.
All the doctors talks a good game. Now go read Oliver Sachs, and get back to me. Compared to the size of the knowledge required to describe the brain accurately, we've got a millet seed. Hey, this is my brain we're experimenting with, ok? You think I like this? So this is the point at which all the laymen start their wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth. Oh, put a sock in it, my brothers. No, we don't know how SSRIs work. We don't know how 50% our pharmacopia works, precisely. The better we understand the organ, the more likely we are to understand the drugs which affect its functioning.
So, let's get back to my brain.
Bi-polar is at least as weird as depression, near as I can tell. I haven't paid as much attention to it. By the time I got to bi-polar, I was at the point where my attitude was, "Yeah, whatever, give me the pills, I'll take them." There are lots of types of bi-polar. (Why not? There are lots of types of everything. My theory is that all brain diseases are really syndromes, clumps of symptoms that all look the same that may or may not be the same disease.) Most bi-polar cycling can be stopped, or at least slowed down, by an anti-seizure drug or six. As with almost every other damn drug I'm on, the explanation sheet has that charming and endearing phrase, "although doctors are not entirely sure the precise mechanism by which this drug works..." Boy, over the last 20 years am I used to that caveat.
Most anti-depressants, most especially the SSRIs, don't seem to have very many side effects. They can make your make your mouth dry. Wellbutrin makes my hands tremble. It does not cause facial twitches. (Facial twitches are a severe problem, possibly worse than you realize. It makes it very difficult for people to talk to you face to face. You send totally wrong signals. Think about talking to very pleasant people who have been blind from birth. Without practice, it can be horribly distracting.) There are other side effects, some far more serious, but I don't suffer from them.
The anti-convulsants, though, are a lot harder on the brain. They're the ones more likely to get into things like aphasia, loss of hair, memory loss, etc. Things like aphasia and memory loss can be permanent. I can't speak to the memory loss, but my aphasia's getting worse.
Aphasia is normal for a woman my age (44). Losing nouns, verbs, even adverbs and adjectives happens. Brains slow down. But frankly, I'm really not needing chemical help, here. If there's a thing I prize, it's my verbal skills. Fat, slow, I can live with that. Stupid? Just shoot me.
I've started having sentences go missing. From the outside, it's not noticeable. It looks exactly like aphasia. I'm in a long sentence, and then there's a pause, and then I continue, usually. Except that sometimes I'm looking for a word, and sometimes I'm looking for the rest of the sentence. That scares me. Yesterday, I was talking to David, and I was trying to finish a sentence, and I said, "...talefan, talefan, talefan, fairy tail!" That's actually a whole new style of word scramble. Ain't it great? This may be the result of the new anti-convulsant that my psychiatrist put me on, Topomax. It's fondly called "Dope-o-max" and "Stupid-o-max" by many people who have taken it.
Have I mentioned it's the anti-convulsants that are most likely to do permanent brain damage? The risks, per the various public information, National Health, and so on, indicate very low risks of, well, everything. But fuck it, this is my brain. On drugs. And I do not see bacon or a side of toast, than you very much.
Let me start on the basic primer on How We Got Here. Many and many a year ago, in a kingdom about a five hundred or so miles closer to the sea, I became miserable. Really, dysfunctionally, spectacularly miserable. After a decade, various doctors decided that it wasn't just hormones, after all. We began treating depression, and lo, Prozac was very, very good. For about two years.
Then we entered into the mountain range of antidepressants. We tried Paxil and Trazadone and many others whose names I no longer recall. Some of them worked, and some did not. Finally, a brave and lonely psychiatrist said, "Lo, Lord, by certain signs and portents that Thou hast sent unto me, I see that this Patient is Bi-Polar." And many beams of enlightenment did shine forth from heaven and pills of all shapes and colors showered down around her blessed patient.
Or something like that.
For reasons that nobody really knows, Serotonin Selective Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs to you) help with depression. We barely understand what re-uptake inhibiting is. Serotonin, not so much so. In a very real sense, psychiatry is in a Nineteenth Century phase of medicine. Serotonin does something, we take careful notes, then make theories based on those results combined with our currently inadequate understanding of the workings of the brain, do more studies, and serotonin does something unexpected. More notes, more studies, and shifting theories on what that damn organ called the brain really is in the first place. The brain is a terrible thing...too wasted. We've been working on an accurate model for centuries. What we've got are shadows of shadows of shadows with a few bright shiny spots which will probably turn out to be reflected light.
All the doctors talks a good game. Now go read Oliver Sachs, and get back to me. Compared to the size of the knowledge required to describe the brain accurately, we've got a millet seed. Hey, this is my brain we're experimenting with, ok? You think I like this? So this is the point at which all the laymen start their wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth. Oh, put a sock in it, my brothers. No, we don't know how SSRIs work. We don't know how 50% our pharmacopia works, precisely. The better we understand the organ, the more likely we are to understand the drugs which affect its functioning.
So, let's get back to my brain.
Bi-polar is at least as weird as depression, near as I can tell. I haven't paid as much attention to it. By the time I got to bi-polar, I was at the point where my attitude was, "Yeah, whatever, give me the pills, I'll take them." There are lots of types of bi-polar. (Why not? There are lots of types of everything. My theory is that all brain diseases are really syndromes, clumps of symptoms that all look the same that may or may not be the same disease.) Most bi-polar cycling can be stopped, or at least slowed down, by an anti-seizure drug or six. As with almost every other damn drug I'm on, the explanation sheet has that charming and endearing phrase, "although doctors are not entirely sure the precise mechanism by which this drug works..." Boy, over the last 20 years am I used to that caveat.
Most anti-depressants, most especially the SSRIs, don't seem to have very many side effects. They can make your make your mouth dry. Wellbutrin makes my hands tremble. It does not cause facial twitches. (Facial twitches are a severe problem, possibly worse than you realize. It makes it very difficult for people to talk to you face to face. You send totally wrong signals. Think about talking to very pleasant people who have been blind from birth. Without practice, it can be horribly distracting.) There are other side effects, some far more serious, but I don't suffer from them.
The anti-convulsants, though, are a lot harder on the brain. They're the ones more likely to get into things like aphasia, loss of hair, memory loss, etc. Things like aphasia and memory loss can be permanent. I can't speak to the memory loss, but my aphasia's getting worse.
Aphasia is normal for a woman my age (44). Losing nouns, verbs, even adverbs and adjectives happens. Brains slow down. But frankly, I'm really not needing chemical help, here. If there's a thing I prize, it's my verbal skills. Fat, slow, I can live with that. Stupid? Just shoot me.
I've started having sentences go missing. From the outside, it's not noticeable. It looks exactly like aphasia. I'm in a long sentence, and then there's a pause, and then I continue, usually. Except that sometimes I'm looking for a word, and sometimes I'm looking for the rest of the sentence. That scares me. Yesterday, I was talking to David, and I was trying to finish a sentence, and I said, "...talefan, talefan, talefan, fairy tail!" That's actually a whole new style of word scramble. Ain't it great? This may be the result of the new anti-convulsant that my psychiatrist put me on, Topomax. It's fondly called "Dope-o-max" and "Stupid-o-max" by many people who have taken it.
Have I mentioned it's the anti-convulsants that are most likely to do permanent brain damage? The risks, per the various public information, National Health, and so on, indicate very low risks of, well, everything. But fuck it, this is my brain. On drugs. And I do not see bacon or a side of toast, than you very much.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-21 02:37 pm (UTC)I have to go to church, will get bakc to finish reading this later this afternoon.
Still have to compare meds with you , as Nicole just started new bipolar med.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 06:25 am (UTC)