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Stupid brain, stupid body.
Wow. I am so flaky. It is nearly 7 am, and I am still awake because I haven't done anything useful today.
My brain isn't in a very good place. My "new" GP (well, okay, I've been seeing her for 9 months, but that's still new, especially as I don't go to the doctor every single month) suggested I should come off trazodone, since it has a sedating effect which could be making my chronic fatigue worse. Normally I leave medication changes until holidays or other times when I don't have work to do, but I agreed to do it right away because I didn't think trazodone was doing anything for me*. MORE FOOL ME.
So I've spent the week getting increasingly tearful and unable to cope. I've stopped crashing out and being comatose for 12 hours on end, or having incredibly weird, vivid dreams that make me wake up exhausted from tossing and turning - but I can't stay asleep for more than 2 hours at a time either. And I feel slightly as though my head is about to fall off, all my skin is uncomfortable, and every so often I drift a few inches out of my body. Not as badly as proper, depressive depersonalisation episodes - but still not exactly pleasant.
I'm going to continue with my current trazodone dose for another couple of weeks, until either the discontinuation syndrome goes away, or I entirely lose the ability to cope. I'm not sure which will happen first. (I wish it was easier to titrate drug doses - chopping a dose from 100 mg to 50 mg is quite a big jump. Would've been easier if a smaller decrease was possible).
Also, my vitamin D level was 41 nmol/L in my most recent test. (It was 57 nmol/L in the summer, and that was still bad - 75 nmol/L or more is generally considered as the bottom end of "normal", and lately some doctors have started recommending 100 nmol/L as the minimum). The doctor started quizzing me about compliance with the 800 i.u. per day of vitamin D that she told me to take - she honestly thought I was missing it out. I pointed out that I've been taking 1250 i.u. per day because of the amount that was already in my multivitamin, and she suggested 2000 i.u. per day for the next 6 months. Blah!
Fortunately, I finally found a source for vegan vitamin D3. The different forms of vitamin D are closely-related steroid compounds, and there's some controversy about whether D2 (ergocalciferol, derived from plants) is as good as D3 (cholecalciferol) made in animal skin. Obviously, it's D3 that our bodies actually use. On the basis that everything I eat is fortified with vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and yet I was still horribly deficient, I've been taking D3 derived from lanolin in sheep's wool for the pastfew months year, since there weren't any vegan forms of D3 on the market. But apparently it can be produced by lichens. GO LICHENS!
* I haven't been on a single antidepressant in years - my old GP was a great believer in taking several different drugs on lower doses to get the best balance between positive useful effects and bad side-effects.
My brain isn't in a very good place. My "new" GP (well, okay, I've been seeing her for 9 months, but that's still new, especially as I don't go to the doctor every single month) suggested I should come off trazodone, since it has a sedating effect which could be making my chronic fatigue worse. Normally I leave medication changes until holidays or other times when I don't have work to do, but I agreed to do it right away because I didn't think trazodone was doing anything for me*. MORE FOOL ME.
So I've spent the week getting increasingly tearful and unable to cope. I've stopped crashing out and being comatose for 12 hours on end, or having incredibly weird, vivid dreams that make me wake up exhausted from tossing and turning - but I can't stay asleep for more than 2 hours at a time either. And I feel slightly as though my head is about to fall off, all my skin is uncomfortable, and every so often I drift a few inches out of my body. Not as badly as proper, depressive depersonalisation episodes - but still not exactly pleasant.
I'm going to continue with my current trazodone dose for another couple of weeks, until either the discontinuation syndrome goes away, or I entirely lose the ability to cope. I'm not sure which will happen first. (I wish it was easier to titrate drug doses - chopping a dose from 100 mg to 50 mg is quite a big jump. Would've been easier if a smaller decrease was possible).
Also, my vitamin D level was 41 nmol/L in my most recent test. (It was 57 nmol/L in the summer, and that was still bad - 75 nmol/L or more is generally considered as the bottom end of "normal", and lately some doctors have started recommending 100 nmol/L as the minimum). The doctor started quizzing me about compliance with the 800 i.u. per day of vitamin D that she told me to take - she honestly thought I was missing it out. I pointed out that I've been taking 1250 i.u. per day because of the amount that was already in my multivitamin, and she suggested 2000 i.u. per day for the next 6 months. Blah!
Fortunately, I finally found a source for vegan vitamin D3. The different forms of vitamin D are closely-related steroid compounds, and there's some controversy about whether D2 (ergocalciferol, derived from plants) is as good as D3 (cholecalciferol) made in animal skin. Obviously, it's D3 that our bodies actually use. On the basis that everything I eat is fortified with vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and yet I was still horribly deficient, I've been taking D3 derived from lanolin in sheep's wool for the past
* I haven't been on a single antidepressant in years - my old GP was a great believer in taking several different drugs on lower doses to get the best balance between positive useful effects and bad side-effects.
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is there something that particularly signals that you need one or can you just ask for one?