Posted by JohnX2 on March 6, 2002, at 12:46:21
In reply to What's the point of drugs that make yr life worse?, posted by Automated Lady on March 6, 2002, at 7:18:44
Hi,I don't know what happened with your good
medicines. I think this is a common problem
though that I ran into: find a few good meds
that have one or 2 snags.I believe it may be possible to find happiness on
those medicines if you have a good pdoc/better
information. Too many people blame the problem
(not you necessarily) on the medicine instead
of the process of getting to the medicine and
the follow ups.I'll throw out examples, maybe a lot of
people do well on certain SSRIs but have unbearable
bruxism (teeth grinding). What to do?Crummy doctors find it easiest to use the most
simple scientific trial and error method on
planet earth which is process of elimination.Therefore, if you don't like a medicine, let's
just swizzle the patient to another one. Never
mind doing a little investigation to see if I
(doctor) can treat the little nuiance to make
the medication that is mostly working solvable.Ok, now onto the good doctors. Maybe there are
some with some good DEDUCTIVE thinking skills that
can identify trends in your good and bad responses
and focus on addressing those trends instead of
putting you through the swizzle game. Back to
bruxism, a lot of people complain about this problem
but how many pdocs know how to fix it (god knows
there are so many little anti-dotes to try) and
how many would just find it easier to swizzle the
patient onto another medicine where enevitably
the patient will encounter some OTHER problem
that makes medication unbearable.I'm sorry but my take is that good physicians
should have some sort of training in the past
that required them to solve really tough scientific
problems using analytical deduction. A lot of
doctors don't have scientific backgrounds, go
to medical school , learn what they do via
memorization , solve problems with simple
process of elimination, and turn into what I call
"walking flowcharts". If the flowcharts on
giving medicines don't give out all these little
"secrets" on how to make medicines valuable,bearable
or how to put 2 and 2 together from YOUR
history to maybe get a better dx on you,etc , then
the doctor may never find a good treatment for you.Another good example is the starting dx. This
is more important than the medicine. How many
people do I know that don't get the right dx and
then take the wrong meds? Bipolars treated with
unipolar meds, etc. Again, its not always obvious
from an initial exam if you are sly bipolar II.
But maybe after taking 5 anti-depressants, getting
2 hypomanic responses that petered out, instead
of continuing to use process of elimination along
the major depression medicine path the good doc
should look at the trend, use some deduction, and
say, hey maybe this patient is bipolar.Unfortunately I think I am being too idealistic
about finding these docs. They are overbooked.So sometimes people come here, and I give suggestions
as well as others on how to make a medicine more
bearable to improve the odds of making through
the trial to get a response or stay on a medicine
with 1 or 2 snags, or get a better dx. My suggestions
or "secrets" maybe they are, are usually known by at least
a few other people here, (a lot of time we learned
these by BEING BURNT), but the person posting
came here with the question leading me to believe
that his attending physician isn't up on the
"secrets" and using a little deductive thinking.-John
> I have to put this in, because I am getting to a point of despair about ever recovering from my depression.
>
> I have been seriously depressed since I was 18 (although I have had symptoms of depression from a very young age) and have tried Prozac, Efexor and Celexa. Each one of these has affected my life in such a way as to make it worse rather than better. Although ADs have lifted me out of the darkest moods, they have also made me so tired I have had to sleep 15 hours a day, changed my appetite so that I have been scared and incapacitated by my compulsive eating, made me lethargic and numb, made me not care about my life enough to try and change it.
>
> I am sick of being in this mess, which is that I can't cope without ADs and can't cope with them. I am trying to do a university course and am failing miserably because I can't get myself together enough to do any work, talk to anyone or go to any classes.
>
> I have an NHS doctor who is not interested in combining drugs or trying anything unusual (eg. MAOIs) - he isn't even interested in the fact that my depression is different from the "classic" type (it's atypical). I feel like in order to get any real help I will have to do something desperate, and I have no wish to do that. I just want my life back.
>
> I apologise for being very negative, but I would really appreciate some advice.
>
> AL
poster:JohnX2
thread:96683
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020301/msgs/96720.html