Posted by bleauberry on August 9, 2010, at 16:33:49
In reply to Should I try Requip?, posted by Dima on August 8, 2010, at 16:23:49
Of the symptoms you listed, the ones that jumped out at me as being disturbing...hinting at something more than a psychiatric condition, were the leg numbness and twitching. I wonder if you have Lyme disease or something similar? About the only thing missing is the sore joints and muscles, though those do not happen with everyone.
Don't know if restless legs was a problem before celexa, but for sure celexa is making it a lot worse. Remeron also. That's a frequent complaint with remeron.
The meds are working badly for you, so I would need someone to give me one good reason to stay on them. I can't think of any.
A dopamine agonist might help. I hear their side effects are a bit rough but I don't know. The only one I ever tried was Trivastal which was quite tame in terms of side effects.
IMO the whole treatment plan is off course by relying so heavily on an SSRI as the core. Given the set of symptoms, it makes no sense to not try a blind trial of Doxycylcine just to see what happens.
I wish I had some suggestions for you in terms of psych meds. Amisulpride, or amisulpride with SNRI, or amisulpride with dopamine agonist, those are things I would be tempted to mention. For a wide array of bizarre neurological problems such as you described, my Lyme doctor finds Gabapentin to be broad spectrum with many of them. One of his common prescriptions. I just picked up my script of it but have not tried it. If you were limited to purely antidepressants, I would probably vote for cymbalta, even though it is not among my favorites list. It more appropriately targets your symptom spectrum than most of the others. Microdoses though...we're talking open a capsule, dump out the beads, and start with just a couple, increasing each day as tolerated. 10 beads is 1mg. My LLMD starts patients on lexapro at 1 drop, which is 1/10th of a mg, with final doses being between 1mg and 5mg. A completely different approach than psychiatrists who do not understand a bizarre nervous system is different than just depression. Comparing lexapro to cymbalta, a starting dose would be one to two beads of cymbalta. Almost all docs have samples of these they can give you for free. It could be a straight across switch from celexa or a cross taper. I would drop the remeron, or at most keep maybe 1mg-3mg just for sleep. Tiny chunks will zonk you out.
For sure the meds you are on are doing nothing good for how you feel and are doing absolutely nothing to address numbness and twitching. I would think a visit to a Neurologist and an Infectious Agent specialist would be more beneficial than a Psychiatrist.
And I feel strongly a common antibiotic such as doxycycline should be tried as a test for a few weeks. The trial itself is the diagnostic test. Don't try to do some test to validate taking an antibiotic. It's the other way around. Take an antibiotic to rule in or rule out a suspicion. Your symptoms raise red flags of suspicion IMO.
This is tough stuff. I can feel your pain bigtime and I'm just trying to save you some suffering and get this thing improved as fast as possible. No matter what you do, the celexa and remeron gotta go. They have already proven to be worthless for you and in fact may be making you worse than without them.
>
> - Anhedonia
> - Very low motivation
> - Slightly numb part of upper left leg
> - Muscle twitches, such as leg muscles or eyelids
> - Restless Leg Syndrome
> - Physically weak
> - No focus
> - Lots of scrambled thoughts constantly running through head
> - No emotional connection to anyone or anything
> - No emotions, period (sadness, happiness)
> - Poor memory
> - Dreams are pretty vivid and I remember some of them when I wake up, but forget throughout the day
> - Developed horrible akathisia with Abilify as low as 2.5 mg/day
> - Social anxiety/avoidance
> - Feels like I have mild akathisia (Restless, Agitated)
> - Irritable
> - No patience (hate driving because of how much I hate red lights)
> - Energy varies by day and throughout the day
> - Some suicidal ideation
> - Basically, I can barely function and feel like crap.
>
> My father and his mother both have Parkinson's.
>
> On Thursday, I stopped taking the Abilify because of the akathisia, and my doctor prescribed 600 mg Lithium per day and 100 mg Seroquel to sleep. This was added to 15 mg Remeron and 40 mg Celexa.
>
> Tomorrow, I plan to call my family doctor about my RLS and hopefully he will prescribe either Requip or Mirapex. Doesn't it seem like it's a low dopamine issue? Family history of Parkinson's, low motivation, social anxiety, RLS, muscle twitches...
>
> I'm just not comfortable in any moment. Every second just feels "bad". After experiencing akathisia from the Abilify, I realized that how I normally feel is just a milder form of this. I always have some part of my mind thinking about how to feel better. I also always want to be doing something. The second I get any energy, I try to be as productive as possible..doing yoga, cleaning, exercising, etc, but sometimes I'm only a few minutes into it and the motivation/energy disappears.
>
> And I've read that Lithium and Seroquel both lower dopamine. Do I really need more of that, and the possibility of more akathisia?
>
> Bleauberry suggested Amisulpride, but I can not afford ordering it. I will try to get disability payments, then maybe I can try it.
>
> What should I do??
poster:bleauberry
thread:957858
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100731/msgs/958057.html