Blergh, with bonus aphasia.

[baratron]

I have been experiencing digestive TMI for some days now - certainly since Tuesday, and probably since the weekend. I have no idea why because I don't have any symptoms of a bug. At first I thought I might be reacting to the iced buns in Waitrose that I tried because they did not list egg or milk as allergens (thought maybe the sign was inaccurate), but I haven't had one since Tuesday and my gut is still upset. So I've been eating lots of friendly bacteria capsules and live soy yogurt, but they don't seem to be helping.

Obviously, if this goes on much longer, I'll go to the doctor - common sense plus having a friend with bowel cancer will make you get things checked out, even though I doubt this is anything sinister. The dire rear (thanks, ailbhe!) itself is really just an inconvenience, although after several days of it my poor rear is feeling quite dire. No. The real problem is this: I'm on the extended-release form of venlafaxine/Efexor. It's supposed to pass through your body over 24 hours or so. If for some reason that doesn't happen (e.g. because your digestive system is messed up), you don't get the right dose of the drug. As a result of this, every night now I get an appalling headache, like a migraine, suddenly come on with acute aphasia. Efexor is well known for causing aphasia when you're tired, especially at the higher doses; but this withdrawal effect is like most of the words in my head drop out and I'm left unable to explain what is wrong, or indeed to talk about anything. For example, the other day I was making dinner when it happened, and I wanted to ask Richard to get all of the tomato juices out of the cupboard and give me the one with the shortest best-before date. I knew that in my head, but when I tried to say it I couldn't remember the word "tomato" at all, while it took forever to remember "juice". So what came out was "Get the... red...... juice... from the......place." The thing about best-before dates was way too complicated.

It's scary for Richard because it reminds him of after his grandfather had a stroke, and it's frustrating for me. I only hope my damned digestive system improves pronto so it STOPS HAPPENING.

Comments

[hoopycat (from livejournal.com)]

Aphasia! That's the word! Thank you.

Toured the facilities of the shiny new next-3-years-of-schooling today (we had some slack to pick up and some red tape to cut), and met the head of a related but different department over lunch.

"I'm transferring in to the electrical program" came out as "I'm transfurblrublrl... blurrg, words!!" and shot veryfineredwine a "help me I forgot how to speak" glance. She was unfortunately in the midst of chewing a bite of food, so I quaffed a drink of water and eventually got it out.

But still, that happens way too often. One of the myriad reasons why I Hate the Telephone.

[hoopycat (from livejournal.com)]

Oh my, now it's spreading to my typing.

s/and shot/so I shot/

(I'm so tired I can't even find the "edit" button)

[baratron.livejournal.com]

There's different types of aphasia, too. The one that I suffer from is dysnomic, which is when words fall out of your head just as you need to say them. In other contexts I know the word perfectly well, but it falls out during speech.

It only seems to be nouns that are affected for me. Clearly depression and/or my medication greatly affects the part of the brain that processes nouns, while leaving verbs and, to some extent adjectives, untouched. It's interesting how when "tomato" and "juice" and even "fruit" had fallen out of my head, I still knew "red".

My brain will also substitute near-synonyms without my even noticing, like "fence" or "hedge" for "wall", or "door" for "window". And phrases like "turn off the light" and "shut the window" get muddled together, so I might ask someone to "shut the light" or "turn off the window". This tends to be the only way that verbs get affected, though.