Posted by zinya on August 5, 2003, at 17:52:28
In reply to Re: effexor xr for chronic pain (esp. zinya), posted by bori on August 5, 2003, at 15:18:31
hi Bori,
I'm not the expert for giving directions on how to navigate around here :)) but i'll give it a try, plus i'm copying the initial post i was referring to here just in case so you can read it.
First, let me try to give you the "how to fish" rather than the fish itself :) ...
To get from here to the master psychobabble screen, go up to the top of this screen and there's a row of links. Hit the one that says just "Psycho-Babble." It will take you to the "main menu" of sorts. At the top of it, it gives you the names of some subset menu screens (like Psycho-Social-Babble) you can choose to explore. If you scroll down that page below those sub-menus, you come to the archived dates for past posts (on the main menu they seem to get archived at least once a week) and below that are the latest threads from the various submenus. That's where you would find the thread that includes my post which i was referring to and which i've also copied below. But if you go to the thread, you can also see the post i was responding to and the follow-up to it.
If you have trouble navigating the directions i hopefully made clear above, you could also just plug in the following to leap right to my post in the thread in question:
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030802/msgs/247595.html
One other thing: To see earlier posts in this Effexor thread just open the top post visible now on this screen -- from earlier today or yesterday (I can't see it now while i'm typing this reply, but don't go to the original post from 1999. There's a line gap and then the next post below that is the one i'm talking about, which should be very recent.) When you open that post, it then re-adjusts the display of posts to move backward through time. Doing this allows you to scroll backwards through posts as far as you want to go. To get back to the present to open the very bottom post (or, again, if instead you go to the post just above the bottom one - if there's a line gap between it and the bottom that means you've scrolled back in time and you can advance in time again by again hitting the penultimate post and scroll forward batch by batch the reverse of the way you scrolled backwards. Or you can do "fast forward" by hitting the very bottom (and latest) post.
Is that at all clear? It's the only way i've learned to navigate. :)) Hope this helps. And here's the one post (below) i was referring to of my own just in case ...
Meanwhile, sounds like you're a tad better side-effect-wise. It's not a linear thing and some new effects surface as you go up to higher levels. I chose to do what you are debating and took twice as long to move up as what the doctor had advised cuz i'd had such a history of bad reactions to other a-d's ... And i did wait until i felt "stabilized" at a given level for at least a couple of days (with no or minimal side effects) before moving up. I'm not sure if that's necessary or helpful or wise but it's the way i did it. :)
zinya
Re: just more evidence...ADs protect the brain » jrbecker
Posted by zinya on August 2, 2003, at 13:16:26
In reply to Re: just more evidence...ADs protect the brain » SLS, posted by jrbecker on August 1, 2003, at 17:32:24
JRB,greetings ... I've just stumbled on this thread and went to the link you gave here to the prior thread as well - I'm double-posting this in both threads to hope to catch you.
I'm wondering if the experience I've been recounting to doctors who give me only glazed looks for the past 15 years could begin to be explained if I understand correctly the line of interconnection you seem to be outlining here between neural and (adrenal? and) depression-triggering 'damages'.
A brief history, as I know no other way to present my 'case study'. I lived 34 years with energy for anything I wanted, never knew what pain was really, not chronic pain. In 1981, after a serious roller skating accident which left me with a compression fracture between my 4th and 5th lumbars, i discovered a congenital anomaly (quite a unique one according to my chiropracter) involving an extra half a lumbar fused to my sacrum which has from birth presumably meant a pull on my right hip that creates something of an angle. Perhaps some childhood accidents like crashing on my coccix had some impact, but never chronic pain until that 1981 accident. It started first to manifest in sciatic pain for some years. Then a chronic viral infection beginning in 1985 entered the picture. By 1987, i crashed (compounded by the stress and grief of my father's death) into a 'black curtain' of zero energy and only at that point did the doctors look back and realize i'd been running with the chronic viral infection for 2 years, having gone in for sheer exhaustion, had blood tests but no one told me of the infection, figuring it would pass.
For two years from 87 to 89, recovery was elusive. Every time i would try to resume normal activity, which had included swimming between one and two miles a day prior to '87, i recrashed into zero energy even though i resumed with very gradual steps (like 1/4 mile only). Walking became a re-injuring activity. I was referred to various specialists who diagnosed Epstein-Barr, then Chronic Fatigue, also fibromyalgia, miofascial pain syndrome... I tried all kinds of traditional and nontraditional (eg acupuncture) methods.
I was given Prozac first in 89, later lithium (because of merely a one-day-ever manic episode and because i tend to do "fast talk" when i'm with a doctor trying to cram a lot into a visit and some then think i'm hyper but i'm not. What i've eventually come to realize is that my adrenal system, shown in blood work in 2000 to be depleted, is erratic but almost entirely on the no-adrenalin, no-energy side of the pendulum.
Okay, with that as some peripheral but converging background:
I've been telling my doctors for all these years that, in my lay terms, "My back goes out on me and then i just cascade downwards into no energy and feeling depressed." By which i mean that the nerve damage (pinched nerve) in my sacroiliac area -- or then also after getting hit in 1990 by a red-light-runner and suffering additional neck nerve damage from a concussion into my driver's window -- also enough nerve damage that i can no longer applaud as that hand clapping triggers nerve damage that also cycles into body-wide energy flagging and other downturns.
Doctors have been hard pressed to see how or why a reinjury to lower back nerve pain should be related to body-wide energy levels and depressive states. They seem to distrust me that i'm accurately assessing that i'm fine until a reinjury of my back and that that then alone launches a downcycle impacting depression.
Would an upshot of this research you have presented suggest that in fact there would be a plausible cause-effect linkage?
And, to get to remedies, as I'm now on Effexor (month 2 at 150 mg) after having tried without success Prozac, lithium, depakote, zoloft, paxil and celexa at various crisis moments over the past 15 years, usually having to quit due to side effects but sometimes because of no positive effect.
I have begun to wonder (since the Effexor I'd been led to hope would start to work on my adrenal system and show energy benefits by 150 mg levels but so far after 2 weeks at this level has shown none -- and i have had two back reinjuries -- rotated lumbar -- during this time period):
Would I perhaps be better off treating back injuries with stronger painkillers (I tend to try to get by with just 1/2 a vicodin which often is enough to be satisfactory but i've also learned that a full vicodin not only masks the pain but gives me actual energy restoration -- yet i am reluctant to take a full vicodin on a regular basis for fear of addiction), that perhaps if i did let myself take a full vicodin more immediately more regularly at the first sign of back pain, would i perhaps "envelop" the pain that perhaps then would not deplete (?) the adrenal system which then might not -- along the lines of what i gather from the research you cite -- trigger the depressive cycles??
I realize this can at best be answered on a theroretical level here based on a streamlined (!! believe me, you got the short version!) case study and no physical examination plus you are a researcher not a doctor. However, if you have any thoughts on the "logic" of the kind of connection I have long sensed intuitively lies at the root of this past 15 years of debilitation which has impacted my career and my ability to travel as i used to, etc. It's this lay sense that "my back (nerve damage in lumbar/sacrum) that goes out and then i cascade into depression that takes longer to recover from than the back pain itself."
Any thoughts? And apologies if this feels like an imposition in terms of being something out of your bailiwick.
thanks,
zinya
poster:zinya
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030802/msgs/248356.html