Posted by gromit on June 17, 2005, at 2:06:06
In reply to Re: I LOVE lithium » gromit, posted by yesac on June 16, 2005, at 10:48:38
> I have a friend who thinks that I have some kind of drug metabolism situation (fast metabolizer) and that's why I don't respond to so many meds. She thinks that I need to try higher doses of a lot of them. My shink, on the other hand, thinks that for the most part if a drug doesn't work at a reasonable dose, going up to a higher dose won't help. He thinks going up to a higher dose will help when the drug works to some extent at a lower dose. So I don't know.
I think the second theory makes more sense, although if you are tolerating the med pretty well maybe pushing the dose up fairly high is worth trying.
> What happened with the Lamictal?Well I've never been diagnosed with any type of bipolar disorder, I don't know why he insisted on depakote. He wanted to try lithium next but I steered him towards lamactil because I had read that it sometimes has an AD effect. As far as I can tell it did nothing, a short boost every increase but 200 mg wasn't doing anything I could detect.
> Okay now I'm just ranting and raving... well, to wrap the story up, I found my current psychiatrist, who is in private practice, and I've see him for therapy and meds for the past 2 years. He made me realize that there ARE in fact decent psychiatrists out there if you look hard enough.You're right, you can find a good doctor if you keep trying. Sorry to hear you've met some of these people too, it's good you've found someone who will work with you. Your comment about the doctor being late struck a nerve, the last guy was cronically late. His art classes at the local JC were more important. I actually spent probably 30 minutes of one session fixing his computer, on my dime (well my co-pay anyway).
I only have myself to blame, you are bound to run into these kind of people, doctors are not exempt from being total jerks. Once you've identified them, if you have the option to ditch them and you don't, it becomes your fault, you get exactly what you've chosen. My opinion anyway.
I've had kind of the opposite experience from yours. My current 10-15 min visits at a (University) public clinic with a resident are way more productive than an "hour" with the expensive private pdoc. Except for the first visit it was never an hour, especially if someone else was waiting. The last 3-4 visits I had with him were 30 minutes which is really more like 20 minutes. He always billed for an hour and I paid the co-pay for an hour. Like I said, completely my fault for putting up with it, I said nothing at the time. That won't happen again. I'm just glad he's in the past, what a tool.
My turn to rant I guess, actually the last post was probably mostly ranting.
> By the way, I've embedded a subliminal message in this post. It's about answers. In fact, it IS the answers. Now you will Know.
Dammit, as usual I was wearing my metallic head protection gear and missed out on the secret information.
Rick
poster:gromit
thread:509665
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050611/msgs/514168.html