browser life

A month ago, I visited the primary care doc's office because I had had enough of off-the-chart pain days and sledgehammers of fatigue. I agreed to try a Flector patch for pain and Ritalin for fatigue. The verdict is in.

The pain patches had adhesive similar to that of Icy Hot patches, which was cool because unlike most adhesives, I didn't have any skin reaction to these. And they could be worn anywhere you hurt. They were huge, though, so I confined them to my low back and between the shoulders.

While they worked well, the research I found only referenced acute injuries like sprains. No data on long-term use. So I think I'll limit these to my I-can't-stand-it-another-minute pain days.

The Ritalin was much more complicated. It's a drug with potential for abuse and had a huge list of side effects, so I began with the smallest dose. I've had some pretty gnarly reactions to meds in the past, so caution wasn't without merit.

The first day was great: I felt not tired, not wired, but NORMAL, or what I can vaguely recall normal to be. And I seemed to have an easier time than usual concentrating. But it went downhill starting with day two.

First, the headaches started up. Then the nausea kicked in, more than the usual daily nausea, I mean. This was so bad that I very nearly hurled in the aquacise pool on multiple occasions.

But the real uh oh moment was when I got the tremors/tics/muscle spasms from Hades. This is pretty much the kiss of death for me taking a med. But I was so desperate for relief from the damned fatigue that I persisted in the faint hope that the side effects would be only temporary.

Alas, not only did the twitching, nausea etc. persist, it got worse. One day last week, Dan told me that the right side of my face was twitching, and I was feeling so twitchy all over that I couldn't even tell. And then one night last week, my legs started contorting so badly with spasms that I found myself in an epsom salt bath in tears waiting for the muscle cramps to stop so that I might get a little sleep.

And as the side effects worsened, the Ritalin had less and less of an effect on my fatigue. I declared a truce on Friday. The time had come to wean off and try to deal without it.

Well, going off a med when you're already in a flare SUCKS. But so does giving yourself brain damage with a med that isn't helping much. Even so, it ended up being a lllllongggg ass weekend.

For whatever reason, the tremor/tic/twitching thing got worse before it got better. I was flinging kitchen utensils, bars of soap, pens, etc. all over the place. And the slightest thing could cause violent muscle cramping, like turning my head to the left, straightening my leg out in front of me, reaching for something in the fridge, etc.

As the spasms began to die down (they're not done yet, though), my pain level began climbing as all my muscles had become EXTREMELY sore from the over-exertion. I hit that 10-out-of-10, can't do anything but cry, wishing I was unconscious level yesterday. I know from experience, though, that there's nothing to do for it but wait it out.

And of course there was the inevitable increase in exhaustion. The kind where it's actually painful to be awake. Fell asleep on the couch for two hours this afternoon, but it made no difference whatsoever.

Luckily, I've gone through this sort of thing enough times to know that I should improve quite a bit over the next day or two. I was already feeling like shit before I started Ritalin, so I know there's probably a limit to how much better I'll get without it, but I am hoping I'll at least get out of crisis mode.

At the moment, though, I am weepy and weak and bummed.