current state of the h-l (short version)
Oct. 19th, 2006 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baratronI have quite a few regular medications on repeat prescription. For some reason, I keep getting screwed up by weekends. It doesn't help that my doctors' surgery now takes a full 2 working days to produce repeat prescriptions. It used to be the case that if I put a repeat prescription into their letter box over the weekend, they'd process it on Monday and the prescription would be ready & dispensed for me to pick up at the pharmacy on Tuesday afternoon. But now, unless I can get the repeat prescription request into the doctors' before they close on Friday evening, the earliest I'll be able to get my meds is Wednesday afternoon. This is almost a week.
So yesterday on my way into town, I stopped at the pharmacy to explain that I was about to run out of Efexor. Both the usual pharmacists there (identical twins!) know me and my doctor and have all my past prescription details on their computer, so they're usually happy to give me one day's dosage of something in advance of the official bit of paper turning up. However, yesterday there was someone else there that I didn't know, and I panicked and didn't go in. I meant to ring my parents and ask one of them to go round there in the evening, but I forgot. Bah. So I ran out of Efexor. Anyone who's ever been on Efexor/Effexor/venlafaxine will know what the half-life of the drug and corresponding withdrawal effects are like - not pleasant.
Also & unrelatedly, I had a severe attack of nasal congestion starting sometime in the night. I woke up around 8am exhausted & achey with a raging sore throat from breathing through my mouth. Usually, nasal spray & sniffing some Olbas Oil & sleeping propped-up on two pillows is enough to de-congest me, but not this time. So every time I fell asleep I was breathing through my mouth. The effects of several hours of hyperventilation are, in fact, virtually indistinguishable from the effects of Efexor withdrawal: pins & needles in hands and feet & shooting down my arms and legs, numbness in hands, weird electrical effects like insects crawling on the skin, dizziness, and jangling bells if I move my head too quickly. This would all be quite scary if i didn't know why it was happening.
So I feel like ick, and I don't know if this is Yet Another virus or "just" an allergy. I seem to be decidedly feverish, but I'm not sure how much my temperature has to change for me to be certain that I'm fighting an infection rather than "just" having a bad allergic response. The other day, for example, the only thing that was wrong with me was snot, but my temperature was 0.2-0.3 degrees C higher than usual. But I was absolutely fine apart from being snotty. Today I am snotty AND wheezy AND feel cold all the time, and my temperature's up to 37.6 degrees C. I'm assuming I am genuinely ill with something external because of the other symptoms - but I really want to know what kind of temperature increase is associated with what kind of immune system response. This is probably the sort of question that NHS Direct should be able to answer, except it probably deviates far too much from their usual script for them to be able to cope with it :/ I will mark it as a "note to self" to ask my doctor next time I have to go along. I also need to ask whether it's still the case that I'm not allowed to take decongestants - I can't remember which of my meds or illnesses made it inadvisable.
So yesterday on my way into town, I stopped at the pharmacy to explain that I was about to run out of Efexor. Both the usual pharmacists there (identical twins!) know me and my doctor and have all my past prescription details on their computer, so they're usually happy to give me one day's dosage of something in advance of the official bit of paper turning up. However, yesterday there was someone else there that I didn't know, and I panicked and didn't go in. I meant to ring my parents and ask one of them to go round there in the evening, but I forgot. Bah. So I ran out of Efexor. Anyone who's ever been on Efexor/Effexor/venlafaxine will know what the half-life of the drug and corresponding withdrawal effects are like - not pleasant.
Also & unrelatedly, I had a severe attack of nasal congestion starting sometime in the night. I woke up around 8am exhausted & achey with a raging sore throat from breathing through my mouth. Usually, nasal spray & sniffing some Olbas Oil & sleeping propped-up on two pillows is enough to de-congest me, but not this time. So every time I fell asleep I was breathing through my mouth. The effects of several hours of hyperventilation are, in fact, virtually indistinguishable from the effects of Efexor withdrawal: pins & needles in hands and feet & shooting down my arms and legs, numbness in hands, weird electrical effects like insects crawling on the skin, dizziness, and jangling bells if I move my head too quickly. This would all be quite scary if i didn't know why it was happening.
So I feel like ick, and I don't know if this is Yet Another virus or "just" an allergy. I seem to be decidedly feverish, but I'm not sure how much my temperature has to change for me to be certain that I'm fighting an infection rather than "just" having a bad allergic response. The other day, for example, the only thing that was wrong with me was snot, but my temperature was 0.2-0.3 degrees C higher than usual. But I was absolutely fine apart from being snotty. Today I am snotty AND wheezy AND feel cold all the time, and my temperature's up to 37.6 degrees C. I'm assuming I am genuinely ill with something external because of the other symptoms - but I really want to know what kind of temperature increase is associated with what kind of immune system response. This is probably the sort of question that NHS Direct should be able to answer, except it probably deviates far too much from their usual script for them to be able to cope with it :/ I will mark it as a "note to self" to ask my doctor next time I have to go along. I also need to ask whether it's still the case that I'm not allowed to take decongestants - I can't remember which of my meds or illnesses made it inadvisable.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
To put it mildly :(
I've only ever run out once, by one day, and that was quite enough. Fortunately my friend Karen is also taking it, so I begged some from her with a promise to replenish her supply ASAP.
I'm seriously considering asking my shrink to change it for something else. Last time I saw her she was umming and aahing about doing so, but I said that I know that coming off it could be foul, so she suggested boosting me up to 225mg/day to see if that helped. It hasn't. If anything, I'm worse. So next time I'm going to seriously discuss coming off, and make damn sure that we agree on a sensible taper plan.