Posted by Elizabeth on October 19, 1999, at 13:39:00
In reply to Bipolar Disease & side effects from med. therapy , posted by RICHARD MD on October 16, 1999, at 21:58:21
Hi, Richard.
I'm sorry to hear of your troubles! I hope you're able to get approved for disability without undue delay. (Don't give up on the first try; apparently it can be harder than it should.)
I take lithium too. Because I take it for unipolar (non-manic) depression along with an antidepressant, I'm probably taking a lower dose than you are. Serum levels vary quite a bit and can't always be predicted from the dose. (My last level was 0.5 mEq/L, which is on the low end for me and probably wouldn't be effective at all for you. I'm guessing your target level is somewhere between 0.8 and 1.4.)
Tremor is a common side effect of lithium, as you probably know. I use propranolol; some people need anticholinergics such as Cogentin. The visual disturbances and ataxia might be caused by either the lithium or the Klonopin; if they were started simultaneously, it's hard to know for sure. Certainly these are not so common for either drug. Polydipsia/polyuria is very common with lithium; sexual dysfunction is fairly common too, I think.
A number of drugs interact with lithium, and you probably will want to do some reading on that. (One that comes to mind is caffeine; apparently the thing to be careful about is withdrawing from caffeine too rapidly while taking lithium.) Klonopin is fairly innocuous in this regard (be careful with alcohol, which you should be anyway).
Take care, and good luck again.
poster:Elizabeth
thread:13284
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991016/msgs/13439.html